Facilitating content generation via messaging system interactions

ABSTRACT

The following disclosure relates generally to techniques for generating useful content based on user interactions, such as by enabling users to submit questions to and otherwise interact with an answer-providing service. In some situations, one or more interfaces are provided to allow users to specify a variety of types of questions for the answer-providing service, such as via a GUI and/or using a messaging interface based on email or other types of electronic messages. When communications occur via electronic messages, the answer-providing service may in some situations generate and include unique tracking identifiers in electronic messages sent to users, so that the users can reply back to the messages in order to provide a command to the answer-providing service that includes a tracking identifier previously sent to the user and thus verify that the command is sent by someone with access to the electronic messages of the user.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of provisional U.S. PatentApplication No. 60/784,533, filed Mar. 20, 2006 and entitled “ContentGeneration Via Messaging System Interactions,” which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety.

This application is also related to U.S. patent application Ser. No.______ (Attorney Docket #120137.528), filed concurrently and entitled“Facilitating Content Generation Via Paid Participation”; to U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______ (Attorney Docket #120137.529), filedconcurrently and entitled “Content Generation Revenue Sharing”; and toU.S. patent application Ser. No. ______ (Attorney Docket #120137.530),filed concurrently and entitled “Facilitating Content Generation ViaParticipant Interactions”; each of which is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The following disclosure relates generally to techniques for generatinguseful content based on user interactions, such as by enabling users tosubmit questions to and otherwise interact with an answer-providingservice via email or using other messaging systems.

BACKGROUND

A common problem that arises is to quickly and cheaply find accurate anduseful information of interest, such as answers to a wide variety oftypes of questions. As a result, a variety of information sources andother ways to locate information of various types have been developed,but they are often time-consuming and/or expensive to use, as well ashaving other problems such as providing only limited types ofinformation, providing information that is inaccurate and/or irrelevant,etc. For example, encyclopedias and reference librarians may provide onepossible source of answers, but can be time-consuming and expensive (ifthey are even available), and are limited in the types of information towhich they have access, such as to historical and other referenceinformation of mass interest. Similarly, while online search enginesmore recently are available to provide information of various types,they often provide information that is inaccurate or irrelevant, aredifficult or impossible for many users to effectively use, and are alsosimilarly limited in their ability to retrieve various types ofinformation. For example, such information sources may be ineffective inproviding answers to many topical and special-interest questions, suchas a list of restaurants of a particular type in a given geographiclocation that have provided great service during the prior month,suggestions on how best to use particular features on a particular newdigital camera that was recently released, or an identification of aphysical store in a geographical area that currently have a particularitem in stock at a price that satisfies specified criteria.

Other examples of sources of at least some types of information includeemail lists and newsgroups that are devoted to highly specializedtopics, which may allow people to ask questions and later receiveresponses related to those topics. However, such lists or newsgroupstypically do not exist for many subjects of interest, and may bedifficult or impossible for infrequent users to identify if they doexist. Even if an appropriate list or newsgroup exists and a user with aquestion locates it, it may be difficult for many users to submitquestions in a form that is acceptable to specialized culture of thelist/newsgroup, and responses from others may take days (if they occurat all) and may be hard to find among other activity on the email listor newsgroup. Moreover, such responses are often inaccurate or otherwiseinappropriate, since there is typically no feedback mechanism toidentify reliable and experienced users (or to penalize users whointentionally or otherwise provide inappropriate responses), and thereis typically no monetary or other reward to incentivize the mostexperienced and diligent users to participate and provide accurateinformation. In recent years, specialized answer services have developedon the Internet, which may allow questions over varying ranges of topicsto be submitted and answered by paid employees or affiliatedresearchers, but typically suffer from at least some of the samedrawbacks as email lists and newsgroups (e.g., limited to only certaintopics, responses are slow, responses may be inaccurate, little or noincentives for the most experienced users to provide the most accurateand useful answers, etc.), and may further be costly to use.

Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a solution that enables peopleto easily find information of interest (e.g., answers to questions),such as to quickly and cheaply obtain accurate answers to questions on awide range of topics.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates interactions between participants as part on anexample embodiment of a system for generating useful information andproviding such information to users.

FIGS. 2A-2R illustrate examples of interactions between participants aspart of an embodiment of a system for providing information of interestto users, such as based on use of a graphical user interface provided bythe system and/or based on a messaging interface provided by the system.

FIGS. 3A-3C illustrate examples of allocations of rewards to users whoprovide responses to questions of other users.

FIG. 4A-4B illustrate examples of determining portions of an ongoingrevenue stream to be shared with users who provide responses that arepart of a useful answer.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating a computing system suitable forexecuting an embodiment of a described Rapid Answer system for providinginformation of interest to users.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of a Requester UserInteraction Manager routine.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of a Response ProviderUser Interaction Manager routine.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an Answer RewardAllocation Manager routine.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of a Revenue StreamShare Determination Manager routine.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an AnswerCategorization Manager routine.

FIG. 11 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an AnswerExperience Level Incentive Manager routine.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an Item ProviderUser Interaction Manager routine.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Techniques are described that facilitate generating useful content basedon user interactions, such as by providing an answer-providing servicethat facilitates interactions between users who supply questions andusers who supply responses to the questions of other users, as well asusing the generated content in various ways. In at least someembodiments, one or more interfaces are provided to allow users tospecify a variety of types of questions for the answer-providingservice, such as via a graphical user interface (“GUI”) from a Web siteof the answer-providing service and/or using a messaging interface basedon email or other types of electronic messages. Various users of theanswer-providing service may then view supplied questions and rapidlyprovide responses, with the responses of multiple users being aggregatedor otherwise combined to generate answers for the questions in at leastsome embodiments. In at least some embodiments, the response providerusers who provide responses to questions are unrelated to the questionrequester users who provide the questions, and both sets of users may beunrelated to the answer-providing service other than being registeredfor the purposes of making question requests and/or providing questionresponses.

In at least some embodiments, users may be compensated and otherwiseincentivized for participating in interactions with the answer-providingservice in various ways. For example, one or more response providerusers who each provide one or more responses for use as part of ananswer to a question from another user may in at least some embodimentsbe rewarded in a manner specific to the question and their response(s),such as to split a total amount of monetary reward for the questionbetween the response provider users and/or to split experience pointsrelated to the question between the response provider users. Inaddition, in at least some embodiments a portion of an ongoing revenuestream that is later generated from or otherwise associated with theanswer may be shared with the response provider users who provided theresponses. As discussed in greater detail below, the splitting of amonetary and/or experience point reward for responses to a questionbetween the response provider users who provided the responses may beperformed in various manners in various embodiments, including based atleast in part on the uniqueness of the provided responses and/or othermeasure of the usefulness of the provided responses (e.g., based in parton feedback from the requester user who supplied the question and/orother response provider users who provided responses to the question).Similarly, as discussed in greater detail below, the sharing of anongoing revenue stream related to an answer may be split between theresponse provider users who provided the responses used in the answer invarious manners in various embodiments, including based on assessedlevels of expertise of those response provider users (e.g., as may bemeasured using a relative amount of experience points allocated to thoseusers based on previously submitting responses to questions). Inaddition, in at least some embodiments the response provider users withthe highest levels of expertise and past participation (e.g., as may bemeasured using previously allocated experience points for those users)are incentivized to continue participating by assigning one or moreenhanced incentive levels to at least some such users, and thenproviding additional benefits of various types to users having suchenhanced status (e.g., to increase the amount of ongoing revenue streamshare of an enhanced status user, such as by extending the amount oftime that the revenue stream share occurs; to provide additional typesof functionality to facilitate responding to questions, such as byproviding notifications to enhanced status users of supplied questionsmeeting specified criteria; etc.). Various other techniques maysimilarly be used to incentivize high-quality responses and thecontinued participation of the most valuable users in at least someembodiments, as well as to generate types of content other than answersto questions, as discussed in greater detail below.

In at least some embodiments, answers may be categorized in various waysand for various purposes, such as to allow users to easily locate and/oraccess previously-answered questions in a particular category, and toassist in tracking and evaluating the expertise of response providerusers in a manner specific to particular categories. In someembodiments, the categorizing of an answer is performed based at leastin part on input supplied by the requester user who supplied thequestion associated with the answer and/or on input supplied by theresponse provider users who supply responses used as part of the answer.For example, in some embodiments a requester user who supplies aquestion may indicate one or more tags related to the question, andthose tags may be used as user-designated categories for the questionand its subsequent answer (e.g., as part of a group of free-formcategories that are incrementally developed based on user input).Subsequently, the one or more categories for a question from therequester-supplied tag(s) may assist response provider users inidentifying the question as being of interest to answer. In addition,response provider users may supply one or more other tags for thequestion and its answers, which similarly may be used as user-designatedcategories (e.g., by selecting one or more of the most popular tagssupplied by all of the response provider users). Categorizing of answersmay further be based in at least some embodiments by comparing answers(and their constituent responses) to the answers of other questions,such as to cluster or group similar answers and to combine or otherwisegroup related tags or other category information for answers that aresufficiently similar. Such grouped or otherwise related tags and othercategory information may further be used in various manners in variousembodiments, such as to suggest appropriate tags to requester usersand/or to response provider users based on the suggested tags beingrelated to user-supplied tags and/or other information associated withan answer (e.g., text of the question corresponding to the answer).Additional details related to categorizing of answers are includedbelow.

In some embodiments, other users of the answer-providing service mayprovide information that is related to specific questions and answers,such as by allowing item provider users (e.g., representatives ofmerchants) to pay in order to have their responses or other information(e.g., advertisements) included in the answers of questions that theitem provider users select, such as part of a pay-per-responsefunctionality in which an item provider user affirmatively responds foreach question of interest that indicated information is to be includedin the answer for the question before the item provider user is chargedfor the information inclusion. While the item provider users who pay toinclude information in answers for selected questions are typicallydistinct from the response provider users who are compensated orotherwise rewarded for providing responses for questions, in someembodiments there may be overlap between groups of users such that asingle user performs multiple roles at different times (e.g., to attimes act as a requester user, as a response provider user, as an itemprovider user on behalf of one or more item providers, and as a vieweruser). Such items may include products, services and/or information thatare available for purchase, rent, lease, license, trade, evaluation,sampling, subscription to, etc., whether from a physicalbrick-and-mortar merchant at a particular geographical location or froma Web store of an online merchant or another type of electronicmarketplace (e.g., for electronic ordering and delivery via appropriatephysical distribution channels or electronically as appropriate, such asshipment via a governmental postal service or private common carrier forphysical products, or such as via download over the Internet for digitalproducts such as digital music, videos, or e-books). Correspondingly,the item providers provide such items to others, and may includeproduct-oriented and/or service-oriented businesses or otherorganizations or entities, with an item provider user being a user whois a representative of an item provider or who otherwise acts on behalfof an item provider. In particular, in some embodiments an item provideruser may indicate criteria of interest for use in automaticallyidentifying matching questions and a specified bid or other monetaryamount for use with pay-per-response functionality, such that the itemprovider user desires to receive an option for each of the matchingquestions to provide a response in exchange for payment from the itemprovider user of the specified monetary amount if the item provider userso elects. Question matching criteria may be specified in various ways,including keywords to match tags and/or categories that are associatedwith an answer (or its corresponding question before the answer isgenerated), or to instead match other information associated with aquestion/answer, such as to directly match the question content (e.g.,the text of the question) and/or to match metadata related to therequester user who provided the question (e.g., the geographic locationof the requester user) and/or one or more response provider users whorespond to the question in other than a pay-per-response manner. When agiven question matches previously specified criteria of one or more itemprovider users, at least some of the one or more item provider usersthat specified the criteria may each be notified of the question as wellas possibly an option to provide a response to the question in exchangefor payment (e.g., a monetary amount that was previously bid or offeredby the item provider user). Additional details related to actions ofitem provider users and pay-per-response functionality are discussed ingreater detail below.

FIG. 1 illustrates interactions between participants as part on anexample embodiment of a system for generating useful information andproviding such information to users, such as by illustrating examples ofvarious data flow between an embodiment of a Rapid Answeranswer-providing system 111, requester users 101 who provide questionrequests, and response provider users 105 who provide responses to thequestions for use in the questions' answers. In this example embodiment,other participants are also illustrated, including item provider users107 who provide responses or other information for some questions and/oranswers on a pay-per-response basis, viewer users 103 who access andreview previously supplied answers to others' questions, advertisers 121who pay to provide advertisements to be included with at least somequestions and/or answers (e.g., those supplied to the viewer users) andthus provide ongoing revenue streams related to those questions andanswers, and a revenue generation system 113 that interacts with theadvertisers to generate revenue based on the generated answers and othergenerated content of the Rapid Answer system. Revenue may be generatedfrom the advertisements provided by the advertisers 121 in various ways,such as by displaying advertisements along with questions and/oranswers, and with the revenue for the advertisements reflecting a fixedfee or instead one or more types of usage-based models reflecting use ofthe advertisements. For example, the usage-based models may include apay-per-click model (e.g., advertisers only pay for advertisements thatare selected by viewing users), a pay-per-impression model (e.g.,advertisers pay for every advertisement that is displayed), apay-per-sales model (e.g., advertisers only pay for advertisements thatresult in actual sales), etc. Revenue may also be generated in otherways, including payments received from requester users and/or itemprovider users, sponsored links, etc.

In this example, the Rapid Answer system 111 and the revenue generationsystem 113 are both provided by the same entity as part of the systems110 of that provider, and the systems 110 may in some embodimentscontain additional systems or components that are not shown, such as apayment system or systems for other services. Various messages may occurbetween the illustrated systems and users, and may be performed invarious ways in various embodiments (e.g., in an interactive mannerbased on one or more GUIs of the Rapid Answer system; based on anexchange of messages using email or other types of electronic messaging,such as IM (“instant messaging”), SMS (“short message service”) or MMS(“multimedia messaging service”); in a programmatic manner based onelectronic communications sent via one or more APIs (“applicationprogramming interfaces”), such as based on Web services; etc.).

In addition to supplying question requests, requester users may eachfurther interact with the Rapid Answer system in various ways in atleast some embodiments, such as by receiving answers to their questions,providing feedback related to the answers (e.g., to provide positive ornegative feedback related to particular responses and/or responseprovider users), and viewing information about a user account of therequester user with the Rapid Answer system.

In addition to supplying responses to others' question in exchange forcompensation or other rewards, response provider users may each interactwith the Rapid Answer system in various ways in at least someembodiments, such as by identifying supplied questions of interest thatare not yet answered (e.g., questions in categories in which theresponse provider user has expertise or would like to expand theirexpertise), providing feedback related to questions and answers (e.g.,proposed tags or other category information for questions to which theyare responding, positive or negative feedback regarding responses and/orproposed tags/categories of other response provider users, etc.), andreceiving a share of ongoing revenue streams generated for questions towhich they previously responded.

In addition to paying to include information in answers to questionsthat are individually selected, item provider users may each interactwith the Rapid Answer system in various ways in at least someembodiments, such to designate categories or other criteria related toquestions for which the item provider user desires an opportunity toelect to provide a response or other information in exchange for adesignated payment (e.g., questions related to items that the itemprovider user sells or otherwise provides), receive notifications ofoptions to respond to particular questions and to optionally respond tothose questions in exchange for designated payment from the itemprovider user, and provide payment of money or other items of value toreflect elections by the item provider user to provide responses forparticular questions. Item provider users may be distinguished fromresponse provider users in various ways, including that item providerusers may pay to provide responses to others' questions whereas responseprovider users may be paid or otherwise rewarded (e.g., by obtainingexperience points) for providing responses to others' questions.

Viewer users may each interact with the Rapid Answer system in variousways in various embodiments, such as by accessing and viewing previouslyanswered questions of others that may optionally be accompanied byadvertisements. Advertisers may include the actual parties on whosebehalf the advertisements are shown, as well as brokers or otherintermediates who act on behalf of others (e.g., via affiliate programs,or by acting as a service that sells advertising), and may similarlyeach interact with the Rapid Answer system and/or a related system(e.g., a revenue generation system) in various ways in variousembodiments.

For illustrative purposes, some embodiments are described below in whichvarious specific types of content are generated in various specific waysbased on specific types of interactions with users, such as by providingincentives to encourage response provider users to provide answers toquestions, by providing pay-per-response functionality in which itemprovider users pay to provide responses to questions, and bycategorizing answers in various ways to facilitate access by varioususers. However, it will be understood that the described techniques canbe used in a wide variety of other situations, and that the inventivetechniques can be used in a wide variety of other situations, includingto generate other types of contents based on other types of interactionswith users.

FIGS. 2A-2K illustrate examples of interactions between an embodiment ofthe Rapid Answer answer-providing system and various types of users,such as via a GUI provided by an embodiment of the Rapid Answer system.In particular, FIG. 2A illustrates an example GUI screen or page (e.g.,a Web page) from which a requester user can initiate submission of aquestion to be answered. The example display includes an informationsection 201 related to overall operation of the rapid answer system, asection 203 in which a requester user can specify a question, auser-selectable control 205 with which a requester user can initiatesubmission of a question specified in section 203, and overviewinformation 207 about numerous popular user-supplied categories 209(e.g., based on recent questions). The information section 201 in thisexample provides details about the number of response provider users(also referred to as “agents”) that are currently online and ready torespond to questions, an average response time to provide a completedanswer for a question, and an indication of a volume of transactionsthat have occurred, and additional related information may also bedisplayed in some embodiments (e.g., the number of viewer users ornumber of open questions that are available to be answered). Thecategories 209 may be organized in various manners (e.g., byalphabetical order, by popularity, etc.), and in some embodiments may beonly a single word, while in other embodiments phrases such as “food anddining” may be used as a category. In addition, in at least someembodiments in which users are permitted to specify free-formcategories, the categories may include misspelled words (e.g., as partof the displayed “food & dinning” category) or highly unusual words, butsuch categories will typically quickly fall in relative popularity toother categories that are used more frequently, and in other embodimentssuch unusual categories may not be used (e.g., by performing aspell-check and/or other analysis of user-supplied categories, byselecting categories from a predefined list or hierarchy, etc.).

FIG. 2B illustrates an example GUI screen or page that is displayed to arequester user to provide various details related to a question beingsubmitted, such as after selection of the user-selectable control 205 ofFIG. 2A. In addition, while not illustrated here, in some embodiments arequester user may be prompted to sign on to the Rapid Answer systemprior to or during submission of a question request, such as if the userhas an established account with the Rapid Answer system to trackinformation about financial information for the user, past useractivities with the system, user preferences, etc. In this example,various sections of the GUI are displayed to prompt the requester userto provide various information, including to specify a question to beanswered in section 213 (which may be automatically filled in with thequestion text entered in section 203 in FIG. 2A), to provide a summaryof the question in section 215, to provide a time limit for completingan answer for the question in section 217, and to specify a reward insection 219 that will be provided to at least some response providerusers who provide responses that are used in the answer to the question.The example GUI also includes a section 221 in which the requester usercan specify one or more tags for use in categorizing the question, suchas tags to be used as the categories in such embodiments, or tags to beused to select related existing categories in other embodiments. Inaddition, in the illustrated example tags may also be suggested insection 223 (e.g., to reflect popular existing tags or othercategories), such as based at least in part on words in the questiontext and/or summary, and a user-selectable control 225 may be used tosubmit the question to the Rapid Answer system and to be made availableto response provider users.

In at least some embodiments, when a time limit is specified by arequester user, the Rapid Answer system may take various actions toprovide an answer within that time, such as to close availability of thequestion to additional response provider users and responses near or atthe end of the time limit even if fewer than a predetermined orrequested number of responses have been received or if fewer than apredetermined (e.g., 10) or requested number of response provider usershave responded. In addition, a requester user may be able to offer areward for an answer to a submitted question in various ways in variousembodiments, such as to specify a monetary amount to be paid and/or anamount of Rapid Answer system points to be provided, or instead eachquestion may be assessed an amount of money and/or a number of points bythe Rapid Answer system (e.g., with the reward for each question beingthe same, or with the reward instead varying based on the categories forthe question and/or other information related to the question). Asdiscussed in greater detail below, a reward that includes Rapid Answersystem points may provide various types of benefits to response providerusers, and a requester user may obtain such points to be provided invarious ways (e.g., by receiving a specified amount of points for free,such as an initial allocation or a recurring number of points for eachsuccessive specified time period; by purchasing them for monetarypayment; by earning them based on other activities of the requesterusers; etc.) In addition, in at least some embodiments both the questionand the summary may be limited to a predetermined number of characters(e.g., 959 characters for the question and 85 for the summary), and asummary separate from the question may not be used in at least somesituations (e.g., if the question text is sufficiently short).Additional information may also be supplied or specified in someembodiments, such as a geographic location of the requester user, orcriteria related to which response provider users provide responses(e.g., specified desired or required qualifications of the responseprovider users, such as an experience level or other qualification; anindication that the response provider users have previously performedsome indicated task or action, such as to have answered indicatedrelated prior questions; etc.) and/or how the answer for the question isto be generated. Requester users may in some embodiments make the rewarddependent on the time to obtain an answer, such that the requester userpays a premium to have the question answered sooner rather than later.

FIG. 2C illustrates an example GUI screen or page that displays aportion of the answer to a question, such as to the requester user whosubmitted the question. In particular, the example information includesa status indicator 231 to indicate the status of completion of theanswer, one or more graphical advertisements 233, one or more sponsoredtextual links 235, an image 237 of the requester user who submitted thequestion, question information 239, reward information 241, a summarysection 243 about the responses that make up the answer, auser-selectable control 245 to sort the responses, a first 247 of thequestion responses that make up the answer, and user-selectable controls249 to provide feedback about the answer. In this example, the requesteruser may provide feedback to indicate that a particular response is thebest of all responses, is lame (e.g., irrelevant, off-topic, poorlywritten, etc.) or otherwise unhelpful, or is abusive (e.g., includesoffensive language, is wholly unrelated to the question, or otherwiseviolates any rules or conditions associated with provided responses),although in other embodiments other types of feedback may instead bepermitted (e.g., a relative and/or absolute ranking of various of theresponses with respect to one or more attributes being measured, such asusefulness; a ranking of one or more of the response provider usersbased on their responses; etc.). In some embodiments, the sponsoredlinks and/or graphical advertisements may be from item provider usersand/or from other sources, such as advertisers, while in otherembodiments the information provided by item provider users will insteadbe similar to or identical to the types of responses that are receivedfrom response provider users, and may be displayed together with thoseother responses. In addition, the information that is displayed may varyin other embodiments, such as to not display the requester user imageand/or various details of the question (e.g., the question text orassociated metadata such as tags or other categories, the summary,etc.).

In some embodiments, the requester user who asked the question may viewresponses as the responses are incrementally received by the RapidAnswer system, while in other embodiments the response information isnot provided to the requester user until the question has been fullyanswered (i.e., all responses to the question have been received and anyaggregation or other processing of the responses has been completed). Inembodiments in which other users may view such answers, such as a vieweruser, the displayed information may be similar but may lack somedetails, such as the ability to provide feedback about the answer or toincrementally receive responses as they are received. In addition, in atleast some embodiments, users other than the requester user whosubmitted the question may only obtain information about the questionand its answer after the answer has been completed, such as to preventpotential or actual response provider users from obtaining informationabout responses provided by other response provider users. Furthermore,in some embodiments at least some requester users may receive only asingle response to a submitted question, such as the only response thatis supplied by a single response provider user, or instead a singleresponse that is one of multiple responses supplied by one or moreresponse provider users, such as one response that is selected as thebest or that is otherwise preferred over the other responses based onspecified criteria (e.g., the first response received by the RapidAnswer system, the response from the response provider user with thehighest enhanced status, the response for which an item provider user iswilling to pay the most and/or for which a response provider user iswilling to perform for the least reward, etc.).

FIG. 2D illustrates an example GUI screen or page that allows a responseprovider user to identify currently open questions that are available tothe response provider user to select for providing responses. Inparticular, in this example the displayed information includes a section253 in which the response provider user can specify information for asearch of available questions (such as based on a search of tags orother categories, of text of the questions, and/or of any other metadataassociated with the question); a user-selectable control 255 to sort orarrange open questions by tag or other category information;user-selectable controls 257 to control which open questions areincluded in the displayed list 259 and to control a level of detail thatis shown for each question, and an indication 251 related to theresponse provider user's account and/or past activity (in this exampleto illustrate an amount of money earned from providing responses toquestions so far during the current month). Each of the displayedquestions currently include various details that include a summary, tagsor other category information, the requester user for the question, amaximum associated reward for all responses to the question, a timeremaining to answer the question, and a user-selectable control toinitiate a process of providing one or more responses for the question.The response provider user may in at least some embodiments be able tosearch for and/or sort questions in a variety of ways, such as by one ormore categories, by time remaining to answer the question, by the valueof the reward, by one or more geographic locations associated with thequestions, etc. User-selectable controls may also be available in atleast some embodiments to control a level of detail that is displayedfor each question, and in some embodiments selected open questions maybe automatically displayed to the response provider user by default(e.g., to reflect areas of expertise and/or specified preferences of theresponse provider user). In addition, when a question becomes currentlyunavailable (e.g., due to a maximum time having expired or a maximumnumber of response provider users having selected the question toprovide responses), the question may in some embodiments no longer bedisplayed to response provider users, while in other embodiments thequestion may be displayed but the response provider user may not beallowed to select to provide response(s) to the question.

FIG. 2E illustrates an example GUI screen or page that allows a responseprovider user to provide one or more responses to an open question. Inparticular, in this example the displayed information includes variousinformation 263 related to the unanswered question (such as the questiondetails, tags or other category information, associated monetary reward,and time remaining before expiration, as well as in this example toprovide status information about a current degree of completion of theanswering process), a section 265 via which question clarifications canbe requested and viewed, a section 277 with which the response provideruser can specify one or more tags for use as possible categories toassociate with the answer, and information 261 related to the currentresponse provider user's account and/or past activity (in this exampleto illustrate an amount of money earned from providing responses toquestions so far during the current month). In addition, the displayedinformation includes various sections via which the response provideruser can supply one or more responses for the question, including asection 267 with which the response provider user can specify a URL of asite having information related to the answer, a section 269 in whichthe response provider user can specify a phone number related to thequestion (e.g., the phone number of an item provider related to thequestion, such as in this example to include a phone number of a localstore in Los Angeles that has Xbox 360 items available), a section 271to indicate that a response being provided is the response provideruser's opinion (with the opinion being specified in a summary section273 and a details section 275), and a user-selectable control 279 tosubmit one or more responses that have been specified.

In some embodiments, various additional types of information sources orother types of responses may be provided, and the Rapid Answer systemmay further assist response provider users in various ways, such as byindicating potentially helpful Web sites (e.g., based on URLs fromprevious answers with the same or similar categories, or based on beinggenerally useful reference sites). In addition, in some embodiments aresponse provider user may be able to reserve a phone number (e.g., foruse as a response to the current question, such as while the responseprovider user is preparing additional response information for thecurrent question, or instead for future use with other responses), suchas if a particular phone number may only be submitted by one responseprovider user for each question in some embodiments. In this exampleembodiment, the Rapid Answer system also allows response provider usersto ask for clarifications from the requester user who submitted thequestion, such as if the requester user left out important informationor if the question is too broad to be reasonably answered, and anyclarifications received may be visible to all actual and/or potentialresponse provider users.

Although in this example space is provided for one URL and/or one phonenumber, in some embodiments a response provider user may be able tosupply multiple URLs, phone numbers, and/or other sources ofinformation, such as other types of contact information (e.g., streetand/or mailing addresses, e-mail addresses, etc.). Furthermore, in someembodiments a response provider user may need to provide his/her entiregroup of multiple responses to the question together at a single time,while in other embodiments the response provider user may be able tosubmit responses at multiple times. In addition, in some embodiments theresponses may need to be formatted in specific manners, such as toformat a phone number as (###) ###-####—in such embodiments, an examplemay be provided and/or client-side scripting (e.g., JavaScript) may beused to dynamically monitor and optionally modify a response so that itis in the correct format. In some embodiments, the Rapid Answer systemmay similarly restrict some responses for various reasons (e.g., torestrict inappropriate answers), such as to not accept aliased URLs thatwill redirect a browser to a different URL. In addition, the system mayhave various security measures to prevent spamming of responses withoff-topic advertisements or other responses.

While not illustrated here, in some embodiments response provider usersmay provide responses that utilize additional types of content, such asvarious forms of multimedia content (e.g., images, audio, video, etc.),active content (e.g., implemented by the use of applets, plug-ins,scripts or other executable code), and/or links to or other indicationsof content (e.g., a URL link, instructions for locating/obtaining thecontent, access information for use in obtaining access, etc.) providedby one or more sources external to the answer-providing service of theRapid Answer system. Various technologies may be utilized to providesuch functionality, including, but not limited to, JavaScript, JavaApplets, Macromedia Flash, ActiveX, and AJAX. Such additional types ofcontent may be used in various ways, including to provide interactivemaps, weather reports, traffic conditions, calendars, reservationservices (e.g., for restaurants, entertainment, travel, etc.),community-based content (e.g., wikis, online communities, etc.), rankingand other reputation-related services, etc. Such additional types ofcontent may also be generated by a response provider user for aparticular response in various ways, including in some embodiments byusing a set of standardized tools, modules, and/or developmentenvironments that are provided by the Rapid Answer system. For example,in some embodiments the Rapid Answer system may provide multiplecontent-specific modules that may each be selected and configured by aresponse provider user to provide a particular piece of content of aparticular type as part of a response, such as a map module, a calendarmodule, a restaurant reservation module, etc. Other embodiments mayprovide a toolkit and/or API that allows response provider users (and/orthird-party developers) to implement and provide custom content modulesfor use by response provider users and inclusion as part of responses.In some embodiments, facilities for the generation and transfer oflicensing fees for custom content modules may also be provided, such asfor a third-party developer that provides a custom content module toreceive fees from response provider users who use the module (e.g., feesthat may be automatically deducted from any fees awarded to suchresponse provider users from use of the module).

The incorporation of various forms of content by response provider usersin responses may also give rise to various legal issues, includingcopyright and trademark, such as based on how and when the content wasgenerated. For example, if a response provider user includes content ofone or more defined types (e.g., images, audio or video clips, etc.) aspart of a response, the Rapid Answer system may in some embodimentsattempt to gain assurance that the response provider user has rights toprovide the content. Such assurance may be provided by, for example, anaffirmative indication by the response provider user that he/she has theauthority to provide the content, by specifying terms and conditions foruse of the Rapid Answer system that only authorized content may beprovided, by warranties or other guarantees provided by the responseprovider user, etc. Other embodiments may provide mechanisms by whichpotential rights-holders can provide notice to response provider usersand/or the operators of the Rapid Answer system of potential rightsviolations, such as to allow unauthorized content to promptly be removedor otherwise handled.

FIG. 2F illustrates an example of a GUI screen or page that displaysvarious details about an account of a response provider user with theRapid Answer system, including indications of any preferred or otherwiseenhanced status of the response provider user (e.g., based on reachingone or more incentive levels related to amount of expertise of theresponse provider user). In particular, in this example the displayedinformation includes a navigation section 281 with links to variousgroups of information, a reward section 283 that includes informationabout monetary and expertise point rewards earned by the user, a profilesection 285 that includes various information about the user, an awardssection 287 that indicates enhanced status of the user based onincentive levels reached regarding expertise in several categories, anotification section 291 with which the user can specify criteriaregarding types of open questions of interest (e.g., criteria toidentify matching questions, including categories and/or keywords, andcriteria regarding how/when notification of matching questions is tooccur), and a ranking section 289 indicating relative rankings of theuser's expertise in various categories. In this example, severalenhanced status levels are available, such as labeled “silver” and“gold” in this example, with the higher “gold” level providing all ofthe benefits of the lower “silver” level in addition to other benefits.For example, by being in the top 25% of level of expertise of responseprovider users for a particular category, a response provider user mayearn “silver” status and receive various benefits (e.g., an extension ofa default amount of time of 12 months to 18 months for sharing ongoingrevenue streams for answers in which the response provider userparticipated, an ability to specify and receive notifications whenquestions become available that match specified criteria, etc.), and bybeing in the top 10% of level of expertise of response provider usersfor a particular category a response provider user may earn “gold”status and receive various additional benefits (e.g., an extension ofthe default amount of time of 12 months to 24 months for sharing ongoingrevenue streams for answers in which the response provider userparticipated, a more sophisticated ability to specify and receivenotifications when questions become available that match specifiedcriteria, etc.).

In some embodiments, similar types of information may be displayed forother types of users, such as requester users and/or item providerusers. For example, requester users may be provided with information toenable retrieval of questions that the requester user has previouslyasked or viewed, to view points and/or money spent asking questions,etc., and item provider users may be able to see the amount of moneyspent to provide their responses and/or answers that include theirresponses. In addition, if an individual user plays different roles inthe system, the user may be able to view all their account informationat once or to instead switch between roles as indicated.

FIG. 2G illustrates an example GUI screen or page that allows viewerusers to identify answered questions of interest, such as by browsingcategories. In particular, in this example the displayed informationincludes an answer section 295 and a related categories section 293,with the answer section showing various details for each of severalquestion/answer pairs in a “J2EE” category (e.g., the summary of thequestion, the requester user who supplied the question, and thecategories associated with the answer). The answer section may includeadditional information in other embodiments, such as indications of theresponse provider users who provided responses used in the answer and/orone or more of various details related to the answer. The relatedcategories section 293 shows categories that are related to the currentcategory, such as may also be of interest to the viewer user and may bedetermined in various ways in various embodiments (e.g., based onsharing overlapping tags, such as if each category may have multipleassociated tags; based on answers and/or other information related tothe categories being sufficiently similar, based on the categories beingrelated as part of a hierarchy or other inter-relationship, etc.).

FIG. 2H illustrates an example GUI screen or page 200 that allows anitem provider user to specify information related to questions that areof interest and for which the item provider user is willing to pay inorder to include information as part of the questions' answers if theitem provider user so elects on a per-question basis. In particular, inthis example the displayed information includes a profile section 202, aquestion matching criteria section 206, and a question matchingnotification mechanism section 212. The profile section 202 includescontact information 204 a and payment information 204 b in this example.In some embodiments, at least some of the contact information willautomatically be provided as part or all of the item provider user'spaid response to a question. The billing information 204 b displaysaccumulated charges reflecting the amount of money the item provideruser has paid and/or promised to pay for responses that the itemprovider user has elected to provide to supplied questions.

The question matching criteria section 206 in this example includesmultiple groups of question matching criteria 210 a-e that each identifya distinct set of questions of interest, with each criteria groupincluding a category field 208 a, a keywords field 208 b, and a bidfield 208 c. In this example, the criteria will be used to determine tonotify the item provider user of a given question supplied by arequester user if the question matches one of the criteria groups and ifthe bid is sufficiently high (e.g., is the highest bid of any matchinggroup of criteria of any item provider user, is within the top X highestsuch bids where X is a predetermined number), although in otherembodiments other factors may additionally be used (e.g., whether anitem provider user has a preferred or premium status, such as based onpast interactions with the Rapid Answer system and/or based on paymentfor such status; whether the item provider user frequently elects toexercise options of which the user is notified; etc.). In theillustrated embodiment, a given group of criteria matches a questionwhen the category displayed in the category field 208 a is identical tothe category of the supplied question and all of the keywords displayedin the keywords field 208 b appear somewhere in the question text,metadata associated with the question, and/or metadata associated withthe requester user who supplied the question (e.g., geographic location,demographic information, etc.). For example, in criteria 210 a the itemprovider user has expressed interest in questions of any category (asillustrated by the use of “<any>”) that match the keywords “Seattle” and“plumber”. In criteria 210 b, the item provider user has expressedinterest in questions in the “Plumbing” category that also match thekeyword “Seattle.” In criteria 210 c, the item provider user hasexpressed interest in questions in any category that match the keywords“plumbing” and “leak”. In criteria 210 d, the item provider user hasexpressed interest in questions in the “Plumbing” category. In criteria210 e, the item provider user has expressed interest in questions in anycategory that match the keyword “pipes”.

Various approaches for matching questions with question matchingcriteria are contemplated. For example, in various embodiments thesupplied category and/or keywords may be matched individually andcombined in various manners to determine a potential match. Someembodiments may provide a hierarchy of categories (e.g.,super-categories containing one or more sub-categories), and determine acategory match only when either a category specified by an item provideruser is identical to the question category or when the specifiedcategory is a super-category of the question category. Such embodimentsmay elect not to determine a category match when the specified categoryis a sub-category of the question category, because by specifying a morespecialized category, the item provider user may indicate that they arenot interested in questions containing generalized subject matter. Inaddition, various embodiments may employ various techniques whencomparing keywords specified by item provider users to the suppliedquestion, such as word stemming, approximate matching, regularexpression matching, etc. Furthermore, various approaches to combiningmultiple keywords, keyword matches, and/or category matches arecontemplated, such as by way of various logical operators such as “and”,“or”, etc. In addition, the various techniques described above may beconfigurable and/or selectable by the item provider user, such as byproviding the item provider user with the ability to specify keywordsusing regular expression syntax and/or allowing the user to select fromvarious logical operators that should be used to combine variouscategory and keyword matches.

Each of the illustrated criteria 210 a-e also includes a bid field 208c. In the illustrated embodiment, the item provider user may utilize thebid field 208 c in order to express an amount of money that he/she iswilling to pay if he/she elects to provide a response to a question thatmatches the associated criteria. For example, if a question matchescriteria 210 b (category “Plumbing” and keywords “Seattle”), the itemprovider user has expressed that they are willing to pay $0.70 if theychoose to provide a response to that question. If, on the other hand, aquestion matches criteria 210 e (any category and keywords “pipes”), theitem provider user has expressed that they are willing to pay only $0.10if they choose to provide a response to that question. The differencesin values expressed in the various criteria may reflect the fact that agiven item provider user more strongly values more specific matches thanmore general matches. For example, questions that match criteria 210 emay include plumbing-related questions as well as car-related (e.g.,“exhaust pipes”) and tobacco-related (e.g., “tobacco pipes”) questions,and therefore not be as worthwhile for an item provider user in theplumbing business.

The amount of money that a given item provider user indicates that theyare willing to pay to provide a response may be utilized in variousways. For example, some embodiments may preferentially notify itemprovider users who have bid greater amounts of money for given criteria.For example, supposing that multiple item provider users have each bidon criteria that match a given question, some embodiments may elect toonly notify some subset of those item provider users based at least inpart on the amount of money that each item provider user hasrespectively bid. The subset of item provider users may be selected invarious manners, including but not limited to, selecting the highestbidder; selecting some number of high bidders, where the number is apredetermined number or percentage of the total number of matchingbidders; randomly selecting some number of bidders (e.g., with theprobability of selecting a given item provider user being weighted bythe amount of their bid, such that higher bidders are more likely to beselected); etc. In addition, the amount of money that item providerusers are actually charged for providing responses may be based in parton the amount of money they bid for matching criteria. For example, insome embodiments item provider users who provide information for answerswill be charged the amount that they bid for the criteria that matchedthe question, while in other embodiments such item provider users may becharged other amounts of money (e.g., the lowest amount, or the averageamount bid by all of the item provider users who match, are notified, orelect to submit information for inclusion in the answer).

The question matching notification mechanism 212 in this exampleincludes multiple selectable notification mechanisms 214 a-c, includingvia email, IM, and phone (e.g., automatically, such as by an IVR, orInteractive Voice Response, system). By specifying and selecting atleast one of the notification mechanisms, the item provider user maycontrol how he/she receives notification of a question that has matchedat least one of the question matching criteria 210 a-e. Additionalnotification mechanisms are contemplated, including via text messages(e.g., Short Message Service messages sent to mobile telephones),paging, news feeds, etc.

FIG. 2I illustrates an example GUI screen or page 220 that allows anitem provider user to select whether he/she wishes to provide a paidresponse to a particular question supplied by a requester user. Aresponse provided by the item provider user may be included in an answerthat may also include one or more responses from various responseprovider users, as illustrated in FIG. 2K. In this example, thedisplayed information includes a question section 222 with informationabout a question that matches criteria previously supplied by the itemprovider user (although in other embodiments at least some suchquestions may instead be automatically identified for an item provideruser without explicitly supplied criteria in various ways), and aresponse section 224 with which the item provider user may optionallyselect to pay to provide information for inclusion in the answer for thequestion. In this example, the question section 222 includes a questionsummary (“Desperately seeking plumber”), an indication of geographicarea (“Ballard, Seattle”), tags or other category information, anindication of an identity of the requester user, question text details,and an indication of an amount of time remaining in which the itemprovider user may opt to provide a paid response (which may or may notbe the same as the expiration for the question, such as to provide ashorter time as a deadline for the item provider user in order toprovide an option to one or more additional item provider users torespond to the question if the initial item provider user(s) decline).The response section 224 provides user interface controls that enablethe item provider user to select whether to provide a paid response tothe indicated question.

The response section 224 in this example includes a prompt 226 a, auser-selectable answer field 226 b, and a submit button 226 c. In thisexample, the user is provided with only a limited ability to providepaid response information to be included in the answer for the question,and in particular to respond by providing previously specified profileinformation for the item provider user. Such profile information may bedefault contact and/or other information as provided by the itemprovider user, such as to enable the requester user to contact the itemprovider user. The response section 224 in this example additionallyinforms the item provider user that they will be charged $0.75 if theychoose to submit a response, such as based on one or more bids asdescribed with reference to FIG. 2H. The item provider user may opt tohave their response submitted by selecting the appropriate answer(“Yes”) in answer field 226 b and by activating the submit button 226 c.If the item provider user instead selects the “No” option in the answerfield 224 and activates the submit button, or if the item provider usertakes no action (e.g., by not activating the submit button in thespecified time period), the item provider user will not be charged andtheir response information will not be included in the answer for thequestion in at least some embodiments. As previously noted, in at leastsome embodiments a paid response or other information provided by suchan item provider user for paid inclusion in the answer for a questionmay be accompanied by multiple other paid responses from other itemprovider users and/or may be accompanied by multiple non-paid responsesfrom one or more response provider users.

FIG. 2J illustrates an alternative example GUI screen or page 230 thatmay be provided in order to enable an item provider user to provide amore detailed paid response to a question supplied by a requester userif the item provider user so elects. In particular, in this example thedisplayed information includes a question section 232 and a responsesection 234, but the response section allows the item provider user tospecify various details for inclusion in the answer to the question ifthe item provider user so elects. The response section 234 includes aprompt 236 a, a contact information field 236 b, an information field236 c, and a submit button 236 d. If the item provider user chooses toprovide a response, he/she may provide his/her contact information inthe contact information field 236 b, as well as provide otherinformation in the information field 236 c. Other information mayinclude other details related to the good or service indicated by thequestion (e.g., price quotes, warranty information, additional charges,schedule information, hours of operation, disclaimers, etc.). If theitem provider user activates the submit button 236 d, the informationentered into the contact information field 236 b and the informationfield 236 c will be provided as part of an answer to the suppliedquestion, and the item provider user will be charged $0.75. If the itemprovider user does not activate the submit button 236 d, or if the itemprovider activates the submit button 236 d after the time periodspecified in the question section 232, the user will not be charged anyfee and any submitted information will not be provided as part of ananswer to the supplied question.

Other embodiments may utilize alternative mechanisms for enabling theprovision of paid answers to questions submitted by requester users. Forexample, some embodiments may enable item provider users to storevarious pre-configured responses and then select from those responses atthe time when the item provider user responds to the notification. Suchpre-configured responses may include text, audio, images, multimedia,active content, and other forms of content that specify addresses,advertisements, URLs, price quotes, etc. Various embodiments may furtherelect to handle responses provided after an indicated time period forsubmitting responses in various ways, such as to simply discard suchresponses and not charge the item provider user, or to provide suchresponses as part of an answer that may be viewed by later viewers. Suchembodiments may perform such elections interactively, such as byinforming the item provider user that they have submitted a responseafter the indicated time period for responses, but that they may electto have their response included for later viewers for a price (e.g., aprice that reflects a discount of the price that would be ordinarilyhave been charged to that item provider user to submit a response).

In a manner similar to FIG. 2C, FIG. 2K illustrates an example GUIscreen or page 240 that may display a portion of the answer to aquestion, such as to the requester user who submitted the question, butin this example the displayed information includes a paid responseprovided by an item provider user. In particular, in this example thedisplayed information includes a question section 242, a summary section244, and responses 252. The question section 242 provides detailsrelated to the question submitted by a requester user, with the examplequestion in this case requesting information related to purchasingdigital cameras. The summary section 244 indicates that three agentshave provided a total of 10 responses so far, and that a single cameramerchant has provided a paid response. The example responses 252 includea paid response 246 from an item provider user and a portion of aresponse provider user response 250. The example paid response 246illustrates an example of information about a particular cameramerchant, including current availability (e.g., 11 Popular Brand ModelXYZ Digital cameras in stock) and price (e.g., that they are availablefor $199.95 each as of a given date). The answer is otherwise similar tothat described in more detail with reference to FIG. 2C.

Other embodiments may display multiple responses from item providerusers to a supplied question in various ways. For example, someembodiments will order such responses based on the amount that each itemprovider user bid for the criteria used to initially match the question,such that responses provided by item provider users who bid higheramounts of money will be listed prior to, or more prominently than(e.g., using different font sizes and/or colors), responses provided byitem provider users who bid lower amounts of money. In some embodiments,only the response provided by the highest paying item provider user maybe displayed by default, and other responses may optionally be displayedonly if the requester user or other user viewing the answer indicatesthat they wish to view such other responses (e.g., by clicking a link oractivating some other user-selectable control that enables the user toaccess or otherwise view such other responses).

In addition, in some embodiments a variety of additional types offunctionality may be provided by the Rapid Answer system via one or moresuch GUI screens or pages. For example, in addition to providingfeedback on particular responses that are supplied as part of the answerfor a submitted question, the requester user who supplied the questionmay further provide various types of feedback related to the responseprovider users who submitted the responses (e.g., to indicate a responseprovider user who is particularly helpful and/or unhelpful, such asbased on the provided responses and/or on clarifications or otherinteractions with the response provider user) and/or related to one ormore item provider users who submitted paid responses or to those paidresponses (e.g., to indicate unhelpful or abusive paid responses, suchas for use by the Rapid Answer system in restricting or preventingfuture such paid responses from the item provider user). Similarly,response provider users may also provide various types of feedbackregarding a question for which the response provider user isparticipating in providing one or more responses, such as to indicateparticular responses that are supplied by other response provider usersfor the submitted question as being helpful (e.g., the best answer)and/or unhelpful (e.g., lame or abusive), and to provide feedbackregarding tags or other category information submitted by other responseprovider users and/or the requester user (e.g., to indicate the best tagor category, or to indicate unhelpful or abusive tags or categories). Inaddition, in some embodiments users other than a requester user whosubmitted a question and the response provider users who provideresponses for the question may be able to provide similar types offeedback for the question, such as for viewer users and/or item providerusers to supply tags and other categories and/or to provide feedbackregarding others' tags, categories, responses, and participation.Moreover, in some embodiments users may be able to specify varioussecurity and/or privacy preferences and other information, such as toprevent a requester user's location information from being displayedunless it is relevant to the question, or to prevent usernames or otheridentity information of users to be provided to others.

In addition, while examples of various interactions by various userswith the Rapid Answer system have been illustrated using a GUI providedby the Rapid Answer system, these and other related types ofinteractions may be performed in various other manners in otherembodiments. For example, submission of questions, submission ofresponses, and other types of interactions may be programmaticallyprovided to the Rapid Answer system via one or more APIs provided by theRapid Answer system in some embodiments, such as via one or more Webservices provided by the Rapid Answer system. Alternatively, in someembodiments some or all such types of interactions by various users withthe Rapid Answer system may instead be performed using a messaginginterface based on email or other types of electronic messages, or inother manners (e.g., based on an automated voice-based message system,such as via phone messages). Moreover, in some embodiments multiplemodes of interaction may be used by a particular user with respect to aparticular question, such as to submit a question via email and toreceive responses for the answer using one or more other modes ofcommunication (e.g., via an automated phone call, via an IM or SMSmessage, by interacting with the Rapid Answer system via a GUI or in aprogrammatic manner, etc.). In embodiments that utilize IM to receivequestions and responses and to provide answers, the Rapid Answer systemmay have an IM identity indicated by a handle or username (e.g.,“RapidAnswers”) that users may add to a contact list (e.g., a buddylist) for purposes of sending and receiving instant messages to and fromthe Rapid Answer system that contain questions, responses, and/oranswers.

FIGS. 2L-2R illustrate examples of various interactions betweenparticipants using an example messaging interface to the Rapid Answersystem that is based on email communications. In particular, in thisexample the Rapid Answer system provides one or more email addresses (orother electronic message addresses) to which requester users can submitquestions, and answers to the questions can be returned to the requesterusers at the account from which a question was submitted and/or toanother designated account. Submitted questions may then be provided toresponse provider users and/or item provider users in various ways, andcorresponding responses may be received from those users in variousways, such as via a GUI as previously described in FIGS. 2A-2K, orinstead based on email messages or another type of messaging interface.

In particular, FIG. 2L illustrates an example email message 291 that anexample requester user UserABC has sent to submit a question to theRapid Answer system, such as to an email address provided by the RapidAnswer system for receiving such questions (in this example,“ask@rapid-answer.com”). In this example, the question is specified aspart of the subject line 291 d of the email, such as to requestinformation about Italian restaurants in Boston, and other informationrelated to the question is not specified (e.g., tags or othercategories, other metadata related to the question, etc.). FIG. 2Millustrates an alternative example email message that requester userUserABC has sent to submit a question to the Rapid Answer system, but inthis example the email message body includes information 291 e-291 g tospecify additional related information, such as tags or other categoryinformation, a geographic location associated with the question, andinformation about a reward offered by UserABC for providing an answerfor the question. In other embodiments, such question-specific rewardsdesignated by requester users may not be used, such as if each requesteruser is instead charged the same amount to submit a question (e.g., tencents) and/or if the same number of experience points is provided as areward for each such submitted question. Additional information, such astag and/or category information, reward information, etc., is identifiedin the illustrated email by preceding the information with a textualindicator to identify the type of the subsequent information (e.g., byusing “tags:” to indicate the specified tags), but can be specified inother manners in other embodiments. For example, FIG. 2N illustrates anexample in line 291 h in which a character-based indicator is insteadused to identify tag information that is being supplied (in thisexample, an at sign “@”). In other embodiments, various types ofinformation about a question being submitted may instead be submitted inother manners, such as by including the question text in the body of theemail, submitting the question via multiple related emails, etc.

FIG. 2O illustrates several responses supplied back to UserABC for thesupplied question, with the responses each sent in a separate emailmessage in this example. For example, a first response email 292 is sentto include a phone number of a particular restaurant this is supplied byresponse provider user UserDEF, with the text of the response includedin the subject line 292 d in this example. As is shown, in this examplethe response email is sent from the Rapid Answer system rather thandirectly from the response provider user, with the response informationpotentially having been supplied to the Rapid Answer system by responseprovider user UserDEF via a GUI of the Rapid Answer system. Exampleresponse email 293 from response provider user UserGHI includes anopinion response, with summary information shown in the subject line 293d and with additional information 293 e included in the email messagebody. Example response email 294 includes a second response fromresponse provider user UserDEF, which in this example includes a Website URL. Various other types of response information may be provided inother manners in other embodiments, such as by providing multipleresponses from a single response provider user or from all responseprovider users together in a single response email message, and byspecifying the actual response information in various other ways.

In addition, in this example the Rapid Answer system furtherautomatically includes additional information in the response emailssent to UserABC, which in this example are tracking identifiers shown inlines 292 e, 293 f, and 294 e of the response emails that are unique tothe submitted question. In this example, the tracking identifiers arerelated but each distinct (e.g., by including a common base identifier“2341973293” followed by a suffix identifier specific to each responseemail), but in other embodiments may instead be related in othermanners, identical for all of the response emails for a particularquestion, or unrelated to each other (e.g., by each being randomlygenerated and associated with the corresponding response email). Thetracking identifiers are provided in this example to provide additionalsecurity with respect to some types of actions taken by requester users.For example, while UserABC was able in this example to supply a questionwithout including a tracking identifier or other information for use inverifying the authenticity of the email with which the question issubmitted (e.g., a password or other identifying information forUserABC), at least some other types of interactions in this example byUserABC may require additional verification, such as by including atracking identifier from an email supplied for the question to which theinteraction is related (e.g., to provide feedback regarding theresponses and/or response provider users) or from any email (e.g., toprovide a command to the Rapid Answer system related to the account ofUserABC that is not specific to the submitted question). By including atracking identifier from a prior email sent to the requester user fromthe Rapid Answer system, additional security is provided in that amalicious user without access to such prior emails cannot send effectiveemails to the Rapid Answer system on behalf of UserABC.

FIG. 2P illustrates multiple examples of using such tracking informationwhen the requester user UserABC provides additional messages, such asfor feedback and other commands. For example, FIG. 2P includes analternative embodiment of previously discussed response email 292, whichin this example includes information and user-selectable controls 292 fin the body of the email to allow the requester user to provide feedbackrelated to the response (e.g., controls that are links to be displayedin an HTML-based email viewer). Example email 295 then demonstrates afeedback email that may be generated and sent to the Rapid Answer systemif the requester user UserABC selects the “Unhelpful” feedback controlin the response email 292, such as in an automatic manner withoutfurther interaction or input by UserABC. In this example, the generatedemail is sent to a different email address of the Rapid Answer system(e.g., “feedback@rapid-answer.com”), and the actual feedback and atracking identifier that is related to (e.g., based on) the trackingidentifier from the response email 292 are included in the subject lineof the feedback email. In other embodiments, the feedback email maycontain other types of information and/or be specified in another manner(e.g., the tracking identifier included in the feedback email mayinstead be identical to the tracking identifier in the response email292, or may be unrelated, such as if the included tracking identifierwas previously generated by the Rapid Answer system and associated withthe “Unhelpful” control in the response email 292 that was sent to therequester user).

Example feedback email 296 provides an alternative example of a feedbackemail from requester user UserABC related to prior response email 294,and in particular illustrates an example of a feedback email that isgenerated by UserABC without use of any special feedback-relatedcontrols provided to UserABC. Instead, in this example UserABC providesfeedback related to the response email 294 by using email replycapabilities, with the response email 294 included in the reply feedbackemail in typical fashion (including the tracking identifier that waspresent in response email 294), with the reply email being returned tothe sender of the response email 294 (which in this example wasindicated to be the same “ask@rapid-answer.com” email address, althoughin other embodiments a distinct response email address could be used foreach of some or all of the response emails, such as“response@rapid-answer.com”), and with the “Unhelpful” feedback beingmanually input by UserABC in line 296 e of the body of the feedbackemail. In other embodiments, tracking identifiers and/or other trackingfunctionality may be used in other manners, and while the trackingidentifiers are labeled in this example, in other embodiments thetracking identifiers may not be labeled and/or may be otherwiseobfuscated in order to prevent identification of the information bymalicious users. Such obfuscation may be accomplished in various ways,such as by being placed into email message headers that are typicallynot displayed by email clients, by being located in non-displayableportions of a rich-text message body (e.g., as a comment in anHTML-formatted message body), by being embedded or otherwise encoded inbinary message content (e.g., as a comment field or watermark in binaryimage data), etc.

FIG. 2Q illustrates an example of a command email that is supplied byUserABC to the Rapid Answer system in such a manner as to use a trackingidentifier from an email previously sent to UserABC by the Rapid Answersystem, but with the prior email being unrelated to the current command.In particular, in this example each question submission by UserABC ispaid for by UserABC based on previously purchased question credits orpoints, and UserABC desires to pre-purchase credits for use insubmitting ten additional questions. Accordingly, UserABC in thisexample selects any email that was previously sent to UserABC by theRapid Answer system (or in other embodiments any such previously sentemail that meets specified criteria, such as within a certain amount oftime and/or of a certain type), and generates a reply email to the RapidAnswer system that includes a desired command (e.g., one of a predefinedset of commands that were previously provided to UserABC, such as whenUserABC initially registered with the Rapid Answer system and/orconfigured use of the messaging-based interface). In this example,UserABC generates a command email message 297 by replying to priorresponse email 294, and includes the command “Buy 10” in line 297 e ofthe body of the reply mail to indicate that ten additional questioncredits are to be pre-purchased (e.g., using previously specifiedpayment information from UserABC's account). When the Rapid Answersystem receives the command email, the system verifies that the commandemail includes a tracking identifier from an email that the Rapid Answersystem previously provided to UserABC, and may further performadditional checking to determine whether to authorize the indicatedaction (e.g., by reviewing previously specified preferences or otherconfiguration information for UserABC, by reviewing a current status ofUserABC's account and whether any money is owed or other problems exist,etc.). In this example, the Rapid Answer system determines to grant thecommand, but only if UserABC supplies additional confirmation to ensurethat the received command email was actually from UserABC (e.g., forsome or all types of command messages). Accordingly, the Rapid Answersystem generates and sends confirmation request email 298 that requestsin subject line 298 d that UserABC reply to confirm the command. In theillustrated example, the confirmation request email 298 includes a newtracking identifier in line 298 e that is related to but distinct fromthe tracking identifier used with UserABC's command email 297 (e.g., bysharing the first six digits, but with the subsequent four digits beingrandomly generated). In this example, after UserABC receives theconfirmation request email, UserABC replies with confirmation email 299that includes the command “Confirm” in line 299 e of the email messagebody. Upon receipt of the confirmation email (and optionally uponverification that the reply email includes the tracking identifier fromthe confirmation request email), the Rapid Answer system performs thecommand by obtaining payment from UserABC for the ten additionalquestion credits and by associating those prepaid credits with UserABC'saccount. It will be appreciated that a variety of other types ofcommands can be supplied, including to reflect any action that arequester user could take by instead interacting with a GUI and/orprogrammatic interface of the Rapid Answer system, and that varioustypes of command information may instead be specified in other mannersin other embodiments (e.g., using XML or other types of dataformatting). Additional details regarding other examples of commands aredescribed below. In addition, while examples of use of a messaging-basedinterface have been shown for only requester users, it will beappreciated that in at least some embodiments any user (includingresponse provider users, item provider users and viewer users) could usesuch a messaging-based interface with appropriate types of messages.

FIG. 2R illustrates two additional example types of messages that may beused with the messaging-based interface, although a variety of othertypes of messages may be used in other embodiments. In this example,message 281 represents a clarification message to requester user UserABCto reflect a clarification request from a potential or actual responseprovider user regarding the question previously submitted by UserABC—inparticular, in this example the clarification question is included inthe subject line 281 d, but could instead be specified in other manners.While not illustrated, UserABC could then provide clarificationinformation by replying to the clarification request email in a mannerto that previously discussed for other types of reply emails. Inaddition, example email message 282 represents a paid response to thequestion previously submitted by UserABC. More specifically, in theillustrated example, a representative of item provider Restaurant RRRhas elected to provide a response to UserABC's question (e.g., afterreceiving and reviewing the question) in exchange for payment fromRestaurant RRR. Accordingly, the subject line 282 d in this exampleincludes information specified by the Restaurant RRR representative foruse in this response. While the response is indicated in this example asbeing a paid response, in other embodiments such paid responses or otherpaid information from item provider users may not be explicitlyidentified as being distinct from responses from response providerusers.

Thus, the Rapid Answer system may perform various types of interactionswith various types of users. Additional details related to one examplesystem for interacting with users to supply tasks to be done and toreceive corresponding results are included in U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 10/990,949, filed Nov. 16, 2004 and entitled “Providing AnElectronic Marketplace To Facilitate Human Performance OfProgrammatically Submitted Tasks,” which is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety.

As previously noted, a response provider user may receive payment orother compensation from the Rapid Answer system at various times, suchas for a response for a particular question that has a monetary rewardand/or as part of sharing a portion of an ongoing revenue streamassociated with one or more answers to which the response provider usercontributed. In some embodiments, such monetary rewards are associatedwith an account of the response provider user at the Rapid Answersystem, and the response provider user may access the account (e.g., atdesignated times or in designated situations, such as once theaccumulated earnings have reached a minimum threshold or no more oftenthan a designated access frequency, or instead at any time) in order toobtain access their accumulated earnings (e.g., to be used as part of anecommerce transaction, to be obtained as cash, etc.). In otherembodiments, earnings may be automatically provided to response providerusers in other manners (e.g., periodically, such as monthly), such as bya payment component that is part of the Rapid Answer system or insteadbased on interactions between the Rapid Answer system and one or morethird-party payment systems. In addition, other types of users maysimilarly receive and/or make payments in some embodiments andsituations, such as by interacting with such a payment component of theRapid Answer system or instead based on interactions with one or morethird-party payment systems. Additional details related to examplesystems for making payments and for tracking related information forusers are included in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/894,350, filedJul. 19, 2004 and entitled “Performing Automatically AuthorizedProgrammatic Transactions,” and in U.S. patent application Ser. No.11/200,880, filed Aug. 9, 2005 and entitled “Performing ProvidingPayments Automatically In Accordance With Predefined Instructions,” eachof which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

In some embodiments, rewards may be allocated to response provider userswho provide responses to questions of other requester users, and FIGS.3A-3C illustrate examples of allocations of such rewards. In particular,FIG. 3A shows an example of a reward allocation for responses to aquestion to which 100 experience points have been allocated for thequestion's answer. In the table, there are columns for responses 301,response provider user 1 303, response provider user 2 305, responseprovider user 3 307, response provider user 4 309, response provideruser 5 311, and total points 313. Rows 315 a-e each represent anindividual unique response. Although the number of responses equals thenumber of response provider users in this example, the numbers areexemplary, and in other situations there may be differing numbers ofresponses and response provider users.

Since there were 5 unique responses and 100 points for the question inthis example, each unique response is allocated an equal number of 20points. Once the points for each response are determined, the points maybe allocated to response provider users by dividing the number of pointsby the number of response provider users that gave the response. Thus,for Link A 315 a, since the points for Link A is 20 points and 4response provider users gave the response, each response provider usergets 5 points (20 points/4 response provider users). The process isrepeated for all remaining responses, and the results are shown in rows315 b-e. In addition, some types of responses may be considered to beinherently unique, such as if all opinions are considered unique. Thus,if multiple response provider users provide an opinion, each opinion maycount as a separate response. In addition, some types of responses(e.g., phone numbers) may be unique if the system will not accept anadditional response that is a duplicate. Totals 317 for the responseprovider users may be calculated by adding the number of points withineach response provider user's column (i.e., for all the responsessupplied by the response provider user). Thus, response provider user 1303 receives a total of 15 experience points (5 for Link A and 10 forLink B) for his/her responses to this question. These assessedexperience points that are newly allocated to a response provider usermay then be combined with any prior experience points or other relatedinformation for a user in order to determine a current assessedexperience score, such as by adding the newly allocated experiencepoints or otherwise combining the new and existing experience points(e.g., in a weighted manner, such as to give greater weight to recentexperience points or to historical experience points).

In other embodiments, other algorithms may be employed to allocateexperience points to responses and/or to response provider users. Insome embodiments, various factors other than uniqueness of responses maybe used to allocate points to responses, including the quality ofresponses (e.g., as measured by feedback from a requester user whosupplied the corresponding question and/or by feedback from otherresponse provider users who provided responses for the question) and/ortimeliness of the received responses (e.g., to provide more points forrapidly provided responses and/or for responses provided by an indicateddeadline). In addition, rather than allocating a fixed number ofexperience points for an answer, in some embodiments each responseand/or response provider user may be allocated a variable number ofexperience points based on a metric such as quality and/or timeliness,each of which may be measured in various ways in various embodiments.For example, quality may be measured based on feedback received from oneor more users and/or in an automatically assessed manner, such as basedon a comparison to other responses (such as responses known or believedto be of particular levels of quality) and/or other factors such as acompleteness or other objectively measurable aspect of the response, andtimeliness may similarly be measured based on feedback received from oneor more users and/or in an automatically assessed manner. As oneexample, each response may be allocated 20 experience points if giventhe highest rating, 10 experience points if given a good rating, 5experience points if given an acceptable rating or if not explicitlyrated, −10 experience points if given a lame or otherwise unhelpfulrating, and −20 experience points if given an abusive rating. As anotherexample, a response provider user who first provided a response may befavored and given more points (e.g., ½ of the points for the response),such as for embodiments that allow response provider users to seeresponses from other response provider users. In some embodiments, if aquestion is associated with multiple categories, then the experiencepoints given may be divided by the number of categories to awardexperience points for each category. Thus, for a two-category question,the response provider user 1 would receive 7.5 points for each category.In other embodiments, the experience points for each response are notdivided for each category, and the same number of experience points forthe response are awarded for each category. In some embodiments, pointsare rounded to the nearest whole point; while in others, fractionalexperience points may be awarded.

FIG. 3B shows an example of an experience point reward allocationsimilar to that shown in FIG. 3A, but with the allocation being modifiedto reflect requester user feedback regarding a lame answer response. Thequestion is the same 100-point question from FIG. 3A, but in thisexample the requester user who asked the question has identified theLink A response as being lame. Similar to the table in FIG. 3A, thereare columns for responses 331, response provider user 1 333, responseprovider user 2 335, response provider user 3 337, response provideruser 4 339, response provider user 5 341, and total points 343. The rows335 a-e each similarly represent responses, and row 337 represents thetotal number of points for the response provider user. Since the Link Aresponse was marked lame, it is not identified as a response to be usedin the answer, and points are reallocated among the four responses inthe answer in a manner similar to that previously described with respectto FIG. 3A. Thus, each remaining response is now worth 25 points (100points/4 responses), and points are split among the response providerusers who gave the same response. In addition, the response providerusers who supplied the lame response also have a predetermined number ofexperience points (e.g., 10 points) taken away as a penalty in thisexample.

FIG. 3C shows an example of an experience point reward allocationsimilar to that shown in FIG. 3A, but with the allocation being modifiedto reflect requester user feedback regarding an abusive answer response.The question is the same 100-point question from FIG. 3A, but in thisexample the requester user who asked the question has identified theLink C response as being abusive. Similar to the table in FIG. 3A, thereare columns for responses 351, response provider user 1 353, responseprovider user 2 355, response provider user 3 357, response provideruser 4 359, response provider user 5 361, and total points 363. The rows355 a-e similarly each represent responses, and row 357 represents thetotal number of points for the response provider user. As a result ofLink C being marked as abusive, both the Link C response and any otherresponse provided by response provider users who supplied Link C as aresponse are removed from the answer, and the experience points arereallocated among the remaining answers in a manner similar to thatpreviously described with respect to FIG. 3A. Since there are now only 3valid responses (since Link C is removed as abusive and the opinion isremoved because response provider user 3 also supplied the abusiveresponse), each response is worth 33 points, and rows 355 a-c reflectthe number of experience points allocated for each response provideruser for each response. In addition to not earning any points for thequestion, the response provider user(s) who provided the abusiveresponse may also have a predetermined number of points taken away as apenalty; in this example, the predetermined number of points is 50points. Row 357 shows the total number of points for each of theresponse provider users after the reallocation.

In other embodiments, penalties and award allocation may be performed indifferent manners and the illustrated examples are merely exemplary.Thus, in some embodiments, if a response is marked as abusive, only theabusive answer may be removed and result in a penalty, and the responseprovider user's other responses may still result in experience points.In some embodiments, the requester user may identify multiple responsesas lame and/or abusive. In some embodiments, the predetermined number ofexperience points taken away as a penalty may escalate based on thenumber of lame or abusive responses received from a user within a periodof time, such as a rolling time period or a fixed time period. In someembodiments, various information may further be displayed such as thepercentage of responses marked as lame and/or abusive. In someembodiments, response provider users may also identify responses ofother response provider users as lame or abusive, and in someembodiments item provider users' responses may also be marked as lameand/or abusive. Furthermore, in some embodiments, response providerusers may be penalized in manners other than a reduction in experiencepoints, such as by temporarily or permanently banning such users fromreceiving questions, providing answers, or undertaking other actions.

In addition, in some embodiments, experience points may be utilized toincentivize or otherwise control the activity of item provider users.For example, item provider users may be awarded experience points basedon positive feedback obtained from requester users and/or other users ofthe Rapid Answer system. Such feedback may be based on the usefulness ofresponses (e.g., accuracy and/or responsiveness of information provided)and/or evaluations of goods and/or services provided by an item provideruser (e.g., quality of provided service, promptness of delivery ofprovided goods, value of provided goods, etc.). In addition, itemprovider users may be incentivized to obtain successively higher levelsof expertise (e.g., as measured by an accumulation of experience points)by providing additional benefits to item provider users with advancedexpertise levels. Such benefits may include favorable payment terms(e.g., discounts on the amount of money an item provider pays to providea response, longer periods of time for account payment, etc.), increasedaccess to questions that are more likely to be valuable to item providerusers (e.g., requests for information for expensive goods and/orservices), etc. In addition, penalties may be utilized to providedisincentives for item provider users to undertake undesirableactivities. Such undesirable activities may include, for example,submitting responses that are not unhelpful or otherwise irrelevant(e.g., advertisements or solicitations for goods and/or services notrelated to those indicated by the question), providing nonconforminggoods and/or services (e.g., defective goods, poor quality service, slowdelivery, failure to honor warranties, etc.), etc. Such penalties may bebased on a reduction of accumulated experience points for an itemprovider user, such that a penalized item provider user may lose anenhanced status that was based on accumulation of experience points. Inaddition, other penalty mechanisms may be used, such as temporary orpermanent prohibitions of particular actions of a penalized itemprovider user (e.g., bans on providing any responses or providingresponses to certain categories of questions, etc).

FIGS. 4A-4B illustrate examples of determining portions of an ongoingrevenue stream for an answer to be shared with users who provideresponses that are part of the answer. In particular, FIG. 4A shows oneembodiment of determining the revenue stream share portions for aquestion whose answer has been determined, with the answer in thisexample having a single associated category (not shown). The table inFIG. 4A has columns 401, 403, 405, 407, and 409 representing the fiveresponse provider users who provided a response, and column 411representing a total. The number of response provider users is onlyexemplary, and more or fewer response provider users may have answeredany individual question. In order to determine the percentage of therevenue share between the response provider users, the relative rankingof the response provider users for the category associated with theanswer to the question may be determined based on the experience pointsearned for the category. Row 413 illustrates the current experiencescore of each user in the category associated with the answer(represented here by the raw number of total experience points for theuser in the category), and the relative ranking for the users based onthose experience points is shown in row 415 (in this example, theresponse provider user with the highest number of experience points inthe category receives the highest relative ranking of 5, since there arefive response provider users, while the response provider user with thelowest ranking receives the relative rank of 1). The percentage of therevenue share portion is then determined in this example for eachresponse provider user in a manner weighted by the relative ranking ofthe user—in particular, the total of the relative rankings in thisexample is 15 (the sum of 1+2+3+4+5), and the percentage is determinedby dividing the relative ranking by the total ranking. The result isshown in row 417 for each of the response provider users.

In other embodiments, different allocation algorithms may be utilized.For example, response provider users who provided a response marked lameor abusive may not receive a revenue share for the answer in someembodiments. In some embodiments, response provider users who onlyprovided a lame response may instead have their revenue share percentageadjusted downward, while the response provider user who provided thebest response may receive the portion of the revenue taken away from theresponse provider user that provided the lame response. If multiplecategories were associated with the answer, the revenue streamdetermination may first determine the amount of revenue for eachcategory (e.g., by dividing the total revenue stream portion by thenumber of categories), and then perform a relative ranking based on eachcategory.

FIG. 4B shows an example of a revenue stream share determination similarto that shown in FIG. 4A, but with the determination occurring at alater time during an extended revenue share time period of the answer,such that users who lack an enhanced incentive level status are nolonger receiving a portion of the revenue stream share during theextended period. The question is the same question as shown in FIG. 4A.The table in FIG. 4B, similar to FIG. 4A, has columns 421, 423, 425,427, 429, 431 representing the five response provider users thatprovided a response and a total, respectively. However, at this laterpoint in time the number of experience points of the response providerusers may have changed, such as based on the response provider usershaving answered additional questions and received additional experiencepoints. Once again, the users are relatively ranked for each categorybased on the number of experience points for this category and thepercents calculated, but response provider user 1 has now overtakenresponse provider user 3 in the relative rankings. Row 433 shows thecurrent experience scores for the response provider users based oncumulative experience points, and row 435 shows the current relativeranking of the response provider users. However, if the responseprovider user does not have an enhanced status, then the percentactually earned becomes zero. Therefore, only one response provider userreceives a percentage payout for this category, as shown in thepercentage of revenue payout row 437, and the remaining revenue is inthis example retained by the Rapid Answer system.

Preferred or other enhanced status may also change over time, resultingin the gain or loss of the additional time for revenue sharing. In someembodiments, once the revenue share is lost, it may be lost forever andsubsequently obtaining an enhanced status may not restore it. In otherembodiments, if a response provider user achieves an enhanced status,he/she is eligible for revenue sharing during an extended period evenfor responses previously provided when the response provider user didnot have the enhanced status and even for answers that entered theextended period when the response provider user did not have theenhanced status. However, after some period of time, even users withenhanced status may not receive ongoing payments.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating a rapid answer computing system500 suitable for executing an embodiment of a described Rapid Answersystem, as well as various requester user computing systems, responseprovider user computing systems, and other computing systems forperforming various interactions with the Rapid Answer system. In theillustrated embodiment, the rapid answer computing system 500 includes aCPU 505, various I/O devices 510, storage 540, and memory 520. Thevarious I/O devices 510 may include a display 511, a network interface512, a computer-readable media drive 513, and other I/O devices 515.

In the illustrated embodiment, a Rapid Answer system 530 and a revenuegeneration system 525 are executing in the memory 520 of the rapidanswer computing system 500. The Rapid Answer system 530 interacts withother computing systems via the network 580 (e.g., via the Internetand/or the World Wide Web) in order to perform at least some of thedescribed techniques. The Rapid Answer system 530 includes a RequesterUser Interaction Manager component 531, a Response Provider UserInteraction Manager component 532, an Item Provider User InteractionManager component 533, an Answer Reward Allocation Manager component534, an Answer Revenue Stream Share Determination Manager component 535,an Answer Categorization Manager component 536, an Answer ExperienceLevel Incentive Manager component 537, a payment component 538, andoptional other components 539. In other embodiments, the components mayinstead be organized in other manners. The Answer Reward AllocationManager component 534, the Answer Revenue Stream Share DeterminationManager component 535, the Answer Categorization Manager component 536,the Answer Experience Level Incentive Manager component 537 may be usedinternally and various security measures may prevent external access tothese components. In addition, in the illustrated embodiment a varietyof data structures (e.g., databases) 541, 542, 543, 544, 545 are presentin the storage 540 for use by the Rapid Answer system 530 and therevenue generation system 525, although in other embodiments some or allsuch databases may instead be located elsewhere and/or organized inother manners.

The revenue generation system 525 interacts with multiple advertiserscomputer systems to generate revenue and store details about the revenuegenerated. Revenue details may be stored in the revenue database 546data structure. In those embodiments that determine or estimate therevenue generated for each question, the revenue generation system mayalso keep track of the revenue generated for the question or the factorsused in estimating the revenue, respectively. The revenue generationsystem may also interact with the item provider computer systems. Insome embodiments, the revenue generation system may also cache or storesadvertisements to place onto graphical user interfaces for the vieweruser and potentially other types of users.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the illustrated computingsystems are merely illustrative and are not intended to limit the scopeof the present invention. The rapid answer computing system 500 may beconnected to other devices that are not illustrated, including throughone or more networks such as the Internet, the Web, or LAN (“Local AreaNetwork”). More generally, the rapid answer computing system, requesteruser computing systems, response provider user computing systems, andother computing systems may comprise any combination of hardware andsoftware that can interact in the manners described, includingcomputers, network devices, internet appliances, PDAs (“Personal DigitalAssistants”), wireless phones, pagers, electronic organizers,television-based systems and other various consumer products thatinclude inter-communication capabilities. In addition, the functionalityprovided by the Rapid Answer system components illustrated in FIG. 5 mayin some embodiments be combined in fewer components or distributed inadditional components. Similarly, in some embodiments thefunctionalities of some of the illustrated components may not beprovided and/or other additional functionality may be available.

Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that, while various itemsare illustrated as being stored in memory or on storage while beingused, these items or portions of them can be transferred between memoryand other storage devices for purposes of memory management and dataintegrity. Alternatively, in other embodiments some or all of thesoftware modules and/or components may execute in memory on anotherdevice and communicate with the illustrated computing device viainter-computer communication. Some or all of the rapid answer systemcomponents or data structures may also be stored (e.g., as instructionsor structured data) on a computer-readable medium, such as a hard disk,a memory, a network, or a portable article to be read by an appropriatedrive. The access manager components and data structures can also betransmitted as generated data signals (e.g., as part of a carrier wave)on a variety of computer-readable transmission mediums, includingwireless-based and wired/cable-based mediums. Accordingly, the presentinvention may be practiced with other computer system configurations.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of a Requester UserInteraction Manager routine 600. The routine may, for example, beprovided by execution of the Requester User Interaction Managercomponent 531 of FIG. 5 such as to receive requests for questions fromrequester users and after responses are received, display the results.In some embodiments, the routine also allows the user to providefeedback about the responses and reply to requests for clarification.

At step 605, the routine receives a question, one or more tags andoptionally a reward and additional information as appropriate from arequester user. Additional information may include information thatrequester users regularly fail to provide such as the requester user'slocation or operating system for a computer question. The additionalinformation may also include a time in which the question should beanswered and a summary of the question. After step 605, during step 610,a reward is determined for each question. If the user did not specifythe reward for the question in points (e.g., instead specified in unitsof currency), then the Rapid Answer system may convert the reward into acorresponding number of points for later use by the Answer RewardAllocation Manager routine 800. Points may be obtained by requesterusers in various ways, including by purchasing them from the RapidAnswer system and/or by grant from the Rapid Answer system (e.g., ifevery requester user receives an initial allotment of points and/orreceives additional points on a periodic basis), and in some embodimentsa simple exchange rate may be utilized between government currency andpoints (e.g., 100 points=$1.00).

At step 615, the requester user's account is updated to reflect thereward. For example, if the reward was money, the requester user may becharged the amount during step 615 and if the reward was a number ofpoints, then the points to be used to make request may be deducted. Theroutine may then wait for the responses to the question at step 620. Insome embodiments, since there are a lot of response provider users,responses may be provided within minutes. However, if the question isabout local services and it is the middle of the night locally, theresponse may take longer. In some embodiments, while waiting for aresponse, the requester user may be asked for clarification of aquestion. For example, if the requester user fails to provide therequester user's location, then a clarification may involve asking therequester user for the requester user's location. After waiting for theresponse in 620, at step 625, the responses are provided to therequester user. In some embodiments, such responses may be provided tothe requester user via one or more electronic messages (e.g., with eachresponse sent in a separate email message), and the Rapid Answer systemmay further include a tracking identifier in some or all some electronicmessages (e.g., a unique tracking identifier for each electronicmessage, such as may be randomly generated and associated with therequester user). After providing the responses, the requester user mayprovide feedback that is received by the routine at step 630. Thefeedback may take the form of indicating that one or more of theresponses is lame, abusive, or excellent. In some embodiments, thefeedback may be provided to the Answer Reward Allocation Manager routine800 so that the point allocation can be adjusted appropriately. In step635, other operations may be optionally performed. For example, if thequestion was not answered or all responses were unhelpful or abusive,the update to requester user's account regarding the reward may berolled back. At step 640, the routine determines whether or not tocontinue. If so, then the routine continues to step 605. If not, theroutine ends at step 645.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of a Response ProviderUser Interaction Manager routine 700. The routine may, for example, beprovided by execution of the Response Provider User Interaction Managercomponent 532 of FIG. 5 such as to allow response provider users to viewopen questions and receive responses as potential answers to the openquestions. This routine may in some embodiments operate in parallel withthe Item Provider User Interaction Manager routine 1200 described withreference to FIG. 12, such that response provider users are providingresponses to a question at the same time that item provider users areproviding paid responses to the question. The routine starts at step 705where the routine receives a request from response provider users forinformation about open questions. After receiving the information, theroutine determines if the request was a request to identify appropriatequestions at step 710. If the request was to identify availablequestions that match appropriate questions, then at step 715 the routinedetermines questions that match user requests and continues at step 730.If not, the routine continues at step 720 and identifies areas ofexpertise of interest for the response provider user. For responseprovider users that have previously answered a lot of questions, theareas may be identified based on the number of experience points earnedfor each category. If the response provider user is relatively new, thearea of expertise may be determined in some embodiments based oncategories the response provider user self-selected upon registrationwith the Rapid Answer system. After determining the areas of expertise,the routine identifies questions that match the response provider user'sarea of expertise at step 725. After identifying the open questions, theroutine proceeds to step 730.

In step 730, the routine provides indications of the identifiedquestions to the response provider user and receives a response to theindicated question and optionally one or more categories. In someembodiments, the response from the response provider user may includemultiple items (e.g., multiple URLs that are the source of theinformation, a URL and a phone number). After receiving the response,the response is stored in step 735 such as storing the response in theanswer database 545 data structure. In step 740, the routine determinesif the question is complete. A question may be complete when the timeperiod for the response has expired, after a predetermined number ofresponses have been received, after a predetermined number of responseprovider users have given responses to the question, or after therequester user who submitted the question has indicated that thequestion is complete. If the question is complete, then the routine atstep 745 indicates that the question is complete and proceeds to step750. The indication that the question is complete may also be providedto other components, such as the Answer Reward Allocation Manager 534 ofFIG. 5 for purposes of determining reward allocation for the completedquestion. If the question is determined to not be complete, the routineproceeds to step 750.

During step 750, the routine optionally performs additional processing.In some embodiments, the optional additional processing may includeadding additional area of expertise to the response provider user'sexpertise. Additionally, the routine may in some embodiments at step 750receive feedback from the response provider users such as voting on thebest response, best category and suggesting tags. The routine may alsoperform the additional processing of determining if any additionalrewards such as the ones specified by the requester user are to beawarded and if so, providing the appropriate indications. After theoptional additional processing, at step 755, the routine determineswhether or not to continue. If so, then the routine continues to step705. If not, the routine ends at step 760.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an Item ProviderUser Interaction Manager routine. The routine may be provided, forexample, by execution of the Item Provider User Interaction Managercomponent 533 of FIG. 5. The illustrated routine handles item provideruser requests such as specifications of question matching criteriaand/or contact information. In addition, the routine responds tonotifications to present questions to item provider users by providingquestions to, and receiving responses from, item provider users. In someembodiments, the routine may run in parallel to other routines, such asthe Response Provider User Interaction Manager routine of FIG. 7.

The Item Provider User Interaction Management routine 1200 begins instep 1205 and receives an item provider user request or a notificationto present a question to an item provider user for an optional response.In some embodiments, an item provider user request may be received, forexample, from a user interface component that displays a GUI screen suchas the one described with reference to FIG. 2H. In some embodiments, anotification to present a question to an item provider user may bereceived from, for example, the Requester User Interaction component 531of FIG. 5 upon the receipt of a question provided by a requester user.In step 1210, the routine determines whether an item provider userrequest or a notification was received. If it is determined that an itemprovider user request was received, the routine proceeds to step 1215.Item provider user requests may be received by way of a user interfacesuch as the one described with reference to FIG. 2H. In step 1215, theroutine determines whether the item provider user request is to specifyquestion matching criteria. If so, the routine proceeds to step 1220,and obtains and stores question matching criteria (such as thosedescribed with reference to FIG. 2H) for the item provider that made therequest. If it is instead determined in step 1215 that the item provideruser request does not specify question matching criteria, or after step1220, the routine proceeds to step 1225 and determines whether the itemprovider user request is to specify contact information for the itemprovider user. If so, the routine proceeds to step 1230 and obtains andstores contact information for the item provider user. If it is insteaddetermined in step 1225 that the item provider user request is not tospecify contact information, or after step 1230, the routine proceeds tostep 1235 and determines whether some other action is indicated by theitem provider user request. If so, the routine proceeds to step 1240 andperforms the other indicated action as appropriate. Other actions mayinclude item provider user account operations, such as setting up ormodifying payment mechanisms, modifying one or more pre-configuredresponses, etc.

If it is instead determined in step 1210 that a notification has beenreceived, the routine proceeds to step 1250 and presents the questionand an option to respond to the indicated item provider user of step1205. In step 1255, the routine waits to receive a timeout or to receivean indication from the item provider user. As described in more detailelsewhere, the item provider user may have a pre-determined period oftime in which to accept or reject the option to provide a response tothe question. During the pre-determined time period, the item provideruser may explicitly indicate that they have either accepted or rejected(e.g., by activating the appropriate user interface controls, such asthose described with reference to FIGS. 2I and 2J). Alternatively, ifthe item provider user does not respond within the pre-determined timeperiod, of if they respond after the pre-determined time period, it willtypically be treated as a rejection of the option. In step 1260, theroutine determines whether a timeout or an indication of optionrejection has been received. If neither a timeout nor an optionrejection has been received, the routine proceeds to step 1265 andprovides a response from the item provider user for the question answer.The response provided by the item provider user may be incorporated withor otherwise displayed as part of the answer provided to the requesteruser, as shown, for example in FIG. 2K. In step 1270, the routineobtains payment from the item provider user. Payment may be obtained byvarious techniques, including electronic funds transfers between bankaccounts (e.g., debits from an item provider account), credit cardpayment processing, etc. In some embodiments, the actual payment for anindividual response may be aggregated in an account, which may be billedto the item provider user on a periodic (e.g., monthly) or other (e.g.,when the account value reaches or exceeds a pre-determined thresholdamount). Other embodiments may elect to delay obtaining payment until acondition is met, such as when the requester user is actually providedthe response (e.g., by serving a Web page that displays the answercontaining the response), or when the requester user actually selects(e.g., clicks a URL provided by the item provider user) or otherwiseindicates that they are viewing or otherwise showing interest in theprovided response and/or answer that includes response.

If it is instead determined in step 1235 that the request does notindicate some other action, or if it is instead determined in step 1260that a timeout or an option rejection has been received, or after steps1265 and 1240, the routine proceeds to step 1295 and determines whetherto continue. If so, the routine proceeds to step 1205 and continuesprocessing. If not, the routine proceeds to step 1299 and ends.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an Answer RewardAllocation Manager routine 800. The routine may, for example, beprovided by execution of the Answer Reward Allocation Manager component534 of FIG. 5 such as to determine the award allocation and may revisethe allocation after feedback from the requester user that asked thequestion. The routine begins at step 805 where the routine receives anindication of requester user feedback for a completed answer or anindication of an answer for a question and an answer reward. In step810, the routine determines if the indication was feedback from therequester user. If so, the routine proceeds to step 850. If not, theroutine proceeds to step 815 where the total number of experience pointsfor the question is determined. If the requester user used points to aska question, then in some embodiments those points will be used as thetotal number of experience points for the question. If not, the numberof experience points for the question may in some embodiments be apredetermined number of points for each dollar of a monetary reward or apredetermined number of points for each request.

After determining the total number of experience points for thequestion, the routine identifies unique responses and the number ofresponse provider users that provided a response used in the answer instep 820. After identifying unique responses and the number of responseprovider users, the routine proceeds to step 825 and determines the oneor more categories associated with the answer. The determination ofcategories is described in more detail with reference to the AnswerCategorization Manager Routine 1000 of FIG. 10. After determining thecategories, the number of points for each category is determined in step830. In some embodiments, the number of points per category may bedetermined by dividing the total number of points by the number ofcategories, such as described in more reference to FIGS. 3A-3C.

During step 835, the routine allocates for each category the points forthe category between the response provider users to reflect theircontribution to the unique responses. The routine continues to step 840.In step 840, the routine optionally performs additional processing suchas in some embodiments updating the area of expertise of the responseprovider user. In some embodiments, the additional processing may alsoprovide indications of bonuses awarded to the response provider user(e.g., to the response provider user account DB 542 for use by othercomponents, such as the Answer Experience Level Incentive Manager 537 orthe payment component 538 of FIG. 5). After optionally performing theadditional processing, at step 895, the routine determines whether ornot to continue. If so, then the routine continues to step 805. If not,the routine ends at step 899.

If in step 810 the routine determines that the request was for feedbackfrom a requester user, then the routine proceeds to step 850 where theroutine determines if one or more responses were marked unhelpful. Ifso, then the routine proceeds to step 855 where the unhelpfulresponse(s) are removed from the reward allocation and the pointsreallocated appropriately. An illustration of an embodiment of how toreallocate points for an unhelpful response is demonstrated in FIG. 3B.After adjusting the point allocation appropriately or if no responseswere marked unhelpful, the routine continues to step 860 where theroutine determines if any of the responses were marked as abusive. Ifso, in step 865, the appropriate penalty for the response(s) marked asabusive is awarded and points are reallocated. The appropriate penaltymay involve removing the responses marked as abusive and not awardingany points for other responses from response provider users thatprovided the abusive response. An illustration of an example embodimentof how to reallocate points for an abusive response is demonstrated inFIG. 3C. After removing the abusive response and reallocating points orif there were no responses marked as abusive, the routine continues tostep 870. In step 870, the routine determines if other feedback has beenreceived. Additional feedback may include best response, best responseprovider user, and other positive feedback. If a response is elected tobe the best answer, a number of bonus points may be awarded in someembodiments to the response provider user that provided the response.For example, best answer information may be leveraged to determine theorder to display previously answered questions to viewer users within acategory.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an Answer RevenueStream Share Determination Manager routine 900. The routine may, forexample, be provided by execution of the Answer Revenue Stream ShareDetermination Manager component 535 of FIG. 5, such as to determine therevenue stream share that each eligible response provider user receivesfor eligible answers. The revenue stream itself may be generated by, forexample, the revenue generation system 525 of FIG. 5. The routine startsat step 905 where the routine receives indications of revenue-eligibleanswers and the revenue stream to be shared. During step 905, theroutine also determines the revenue stream for each question. In someembodiments, the revenue stream may be the actual or an estimate of therevenue generated for the answer; however, in other embodiments, therevenue stream per answer may also be determined by dividing apredetermined percentage of the revenue stream by the number ofrevenue-eligible answers. In order to estimate the revenue generated foreach question, many factors including the number of times the answer hasbeen viewed, the number of unique users that viewed the answer, thepopularity of the category may be utilized. All answers may not berevenue-eligible since answers may only provide an ongoing revenuesource for a limited period of time. In addition, in some embodiments,some of the answers may not be revenue-eligible at all, such as answerswith which the rapid answer system was initially seeded, answers that donot include any responses from revenue-eligible response provider users,or answers where the requester user was also a response provider user.The revenue-eligibility of a response provider user may be based onvarious factors, such as any enhanced status of the response provideruser and/or whether the response provided by the response provider userreceived any negative feedback (e.g., was marked lame or abusive). Someanswers may also not be revenue-eligible at the time the routine is runif less than all the revenue-eligible answers are being processed at thecurrent time (e.g., running the routine on an answer anniversary and thecurrent time is not the anniversary of the question).

At step 910, the next answer is selected. If this is the first question,then the first question may be selected. After selecting the answer, theroutine identifies the response provider users that gave responses forthe answer and are eligible to receive the revenue share at step 915.Response provider users may not be eligible after the period of time forsharing revenue for non-preferred users has passed unless enhancedstatus has been granted for at least one of the categories associatedwith the answer. Thus, the routine may need to check on the enhancedstatus of the response provider users. After determining the responseprovider users that provided a response for the answer in step 915, instep 920, the categories for the question are identified. In someembodiments, categories may have been automatically determined by aroutine such as the Answer Categorization Manager routine described withreference to FIG. 10. The next category is selected in step 925 and instep 930 the portion of the revenue stream for the category may bedetermined. In some embodiments, the amount for each is category isdetermined by dividing the revenue determined for the answer by thenumber of categories associated with the answer while in otherembodiments the revenue may be adjusted by the relative popularity ofthe categories. After determining the amount of money for the selectedcategory, the routine determines the relative experience ranking of theresponse provider users with respect to the selected category in step935. In step 940, the routine allocates the category's determinedmonetary amount between the response provider users based on therelative ranking. During step 940, the routine may determine if aresponse provider user is eligible to receive a revenue share for thiscategory at all. Response provider users that do not have enhancedstatus for this category may not be eligible after a predeterminedperiod of time when normal users may no longer receive the ongoingrevenue share. In step 945, the routine determines if there are any morecategories. If so, the routine returns to step 925 to select the nextcategory. If not, the routine proceeds to step 950.

During step 950, the routine provides indications of the allocatedmonetary amounts. In some embodiments, the routine will pass theindicated monetary amounts to the payment component 538 of FIG. 5;however, in other embodiments, the amounts may be stored in the responseprovider user account DB 542 of FIG. 5 until the payments reach apredetermined amount of money. At step 955, the routine determineswhether or not there are more revenue-eligible answers. If so, then theroutine continues to step 910. If not, the routine ends at step 960.

In some embodiments, at least part of the revenue stream is shared withthe response provider users who provided responses used in the answer toa particular question on an ongoing basis. However, the ongoing revenuestream sharing may end after a period of time, such as 12 months. Insome embodiments, a user may extend that period of time by attainingenhanced incentive level status. Enhanced status may be determined in anumber of ways, such as based on the total number of experience pointsaccumulated by a given response provider user within a category or therelative ranking of a response provider user (e.g., top 10%) in aparticular category, or instead in a manner that is not specific to acategory. Enhanced status may confer a number of benefits, includingreceiving notifications of new questions associated with one or morecategories, and automatically accepting a question to be answered by aresponse provider user (e.g., if the question matches indicatedcriteria). In some embodiments, enhanced status may also allow preferredresponse provider users having enhanced status to continue to receiveongoing payments for the responses for a longer period of time thannon-preferred response provider users. Thus, response provider users areadvantageously incentivized to continue to provide answers in order tocontinue to receive the revenue stream share for the response providerusers' historical responses. In some embodiments, there may further bemultiple levels of enhanced status. In some embodiments, if a responseprovider user was voted to have the best response for an answer or to bethe best response provider user for that question, the response provideruser may be granted quasi-enhanced status in which the user gains thebenefit of having enhanced status for that answer only, thereby allowingthe quasi-enhanced response provider user to continue to receive arevenue share for that answer for an extended period of time. As aresult, a casual response provider user may be incentivized to providehigh-quality responses. Additional details regarding the determinationof incentive level status for response provider users are provided withreference to FIG. 11.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an AnswerCategorization Manager routine 1000. The routine may, for example, beprovided by execution of the Answer Categorization Manager component 536of FIG. 5 such as to categorize answers to make locating questions to beanswered and answers easy as well as to allow response provider users togain expertise in categories. This routine may be invoked in variousways, such as by the Answer Reward Allocation Manager Routine of FIG. 8or on a periodic basis, and in parallel to other routines describedherein. The routine starts at step 1005 where an indication tocategorize one or more answers is received along with optionallyadditional information to use in the categorizing. The additionalinformation needed will be discussed in great detail below. After step1005, the routine proceeds to step 1020 where the routine determineswhether the indication to categorize was based on tags supplied by therequester user. If so, in step 1025, the routine determines one or morecategories based on the question text including the summary and/or thetags supplied by the requester user. In some embodiments, at least oneof the tags may become a category, while in other embodiments the systemdetermines the category based on what category previous answers taggedwith the same tags were categorized. After determining the one or morecategories, the routine proceeds to step 1050.

If it is instead determined in step 1020 that the indication was not tocategorize based on tags supplied by the requester user, the routineproceeds to step 1030 and determines if the indications to categorizewere based on responses. If so, the routine determines one or morecategories based on the responses at step 1035. The routine maycategorize based on the responses in some embodiments by checking to seeif the response has previously been given, and if so, of which categoryassociated with the answer the response is a part. In some embodiments,this may be performed only on certain types of responses such as linksor phone numbers instead of opinions. In some embodiments, categoriesmay only become associated with the answer if two or more responses wereassociated with the same category. After determining one or morecategories based on the responses, the routine proceeds to step 1050.

If the request was not to categorize based on the responses, the routineproceeds to step 1040 where the routine determines if the request was touse tags from the response provider user to categorize the answer. Ifso, the routine proceeds to 1045 to determine one or more categoriesbased on the tags supplied by the response provider users. The routinemay perform this in a similar manner to categorizing on tags supplied bythe requester user. After determining one or more categories based ontags supplied by response provider users or if the request was not touse tags from response provider users, the routine proceeds to step1050.

In step 1050, the routine may use other category feedback to adjust thecategories associated with the answer. For example, response providerusers may vote on the best category in some embodiments. If a responsepreviously used to determine a category was removed since it wasunhelpful or abusive, the routine may decide if one or more categoriesshould be unassociated with the answer as a result. Conversely, if aresponse was marked as the best response, then all of the categoriesassociated with the best response from previous answers may becomeassociated with the answer. After using the other feedback to adjustcategories, at step 1060, the routine optionally performs additionalprocessing. The additional processing may include sending indications tothe Answer Reward Allocation Manager routine 800 (e.g., to start thereward allocation now that categories are determined) or updating theindex used for browsing the answers. After performing the additionalprocessing, in step 1095, the routine determines whether to continue. Ifso, the routine returns to step 1005. If not, the routine ends at step1099.

FIG. 11 is a flow diagram of an example embodiment of an AnswerExperience Level Incentive Manager routine 1100. The routine may, forexample, be provided by execution of the Answer Experience LevelIncentive Manager component 537 of FIG. 5 such as to determine therevenue stream share that each eligible response provider user receivesfor eligible questions. In some embodiments, the routine may executeperiodically in order to determine response provider user expertiselevels for use by other system components, such as the Answer RewardAllocation component 534 of FIG. 5. The routine starts at 1105 where theroutine receives indications of response provider users and experiencepoints per category for each response provider user. In step 1110, thenext category or if this is the first category, the first category isselected. In step 1115, the routine identifies response provider usersthat have expertise in the category based on having at least adetermined threshold of experience points in the category. In step 1120,the next user (or the first user, if this is the first user) isselected. After the user is selected, in step 1125, the routinedetermines the relative ranking (e.g., ordered by increasing number ofexperience points) of the user for the category. In some embodiments,the relative ranking is stored in the response provider user DB 542 datastructure so that it may be displayed in the account graphical userinterface as shown in FIG. 2F. Using the relative ranking of the user,the routine then determines the current incentive level status for thecategory in step 1130.

After determining the current status, the routine determines if thecurrent incentive level status is a change from the previous incentivelevel status at step 1135. If so, the routine continues to step 1440 toprovide indications of the incentive level status change for thecategory (e.g., providing indications to the Answer Revenue Stream ShareDetermination Manager component 535 of FIG. 5, turning on and offenhanced status functionality). If the current incentive level statushas not changed or after providing the appropriate notifications, atstep 1145, the routine optionally performs additional processing. Theadditional processing may include checking if any bonuses have beenearned. After performing the optional processing, the routine determinesif there are additional response provider users with expertise in thecategory at step 1150. If so, the routine returns to step 1120. If not,the routine optionally performs additional processing at step 1155.Optional processing may include indications to store the rankings orchanging the size of a category based on its popularity. Afterperforming the additional processing, the routine determines if thereare more categories at step 1160. If so, the routine returns to step1110. If not, the routine proceeds to step 1165 to perform additionalprocessing which may include identifying if any bonuses are to beawarded based on cumulative point milestones or total points earnedwithin a period of time. The routine then ends at step 1199.

In some embodiments, at least some of the types of users may sign upwith the rapid answer system and receive a user account. In someembodiments, the account may be a more general account as part of othersites and/or services provided by the rapid answer system or as part ofa federation of sites that the rapid answer system participates in. Inaddition, in some embodiments, at least some of the types of users mayalso register to receive a special purpose account such as a specialaccount for receiving or making payments. In some embodiments, each typeof user (e.g., response provider user, requester user) has a separateaccount while in other embodiments the same account may be shared forall or some of the types of users. The account then may hold informationabout the user including a username and password for userauthentication, the amount of points earned, payment information,categories associated with the user, enhanced status, and rankings.

Requester users may ask questions and responses may be received fromresponse provider users. One or more responses may be used as an answerto a question and some responses (e.g., abusive responses) may not beused as part of the answer. Potential responses include, but are notlimited to, one or more indications of network-accessible resourcessites (e.g., a URL (“Uniform Resource Locator”) or a URI (“UniformResource Identifier”)) where the response provider user found theinformation, book/magazine citations, database citations, phone numbers,email addresses and opinions. In addition, in some embodiments itemprovider users that provide products or services may pay money toprovide additional responses relating to their products or services.Viewer users may review the answers to previously answered questions.However, the type of a user is not mutually exclusive. Thus, in someembodiments a user that asks a question about plumbers in Seattle maystill answer questions relating to martial arts and/or review previouslyanswered questions about solving a margin problem in the Microsoft Word™word processing application. In some embodiments, a given user mayindicate the role (e.g., requester user, response provider user, itemprovider user, viewer user, etc.) that the user is currently performingin order to access and/or receive the appropriate graphical userinterface for interacting with the Rapid Answer system. For ease ofunderstanding, however, the different types of users are referred to asif the various types of users are distinct. Furthermore, in someembodiments, at least some of the users may be an entity (e.g.,corporation, group, association, etc.) and not an individual person.

Questions and answers to those questions may be gathered via the RapidAnswer system. Various types of questions may be asked via the RapidAnswer system. Questions may in some embodiments be as varied as findinglocal products or services, to determining what foods are healthy, tofinding reasons for cleaning fuel injectors. Questions include anyrequest for information whether or not the request ends in a questionmark or multiple inquires are made within a single question. Inaddition, in some embodiments the topics of at least some of thequestions may be restricted. For example, in some embodiments, onlyquestions about one or more predetermined topics (e.g., local productsand/or services) may be asked and answered. In other embodiments,questions deemed inappropriate (e.g., adult topics and/or topicsinvolving potentially illegal activity) may be prohibited or restricted(e.g., by enforcing age restrictions on access to adult content) asappropriate.

A requester user may indicate a question and one or more tags for thequestion. In some embodiments, the Rapid Answer system suggests tagsbased on term words in the question text, tags indicated by therequester user, and/or metadata associated with the question and/orrequester user. In some embodiments, additional information (e.g.,summary text, an amount of time during which a question may be availableand/or active for users to provide responses, etc.) may be supplied bythe requester user. The question may be presented to response providerusers in order receive responses to the question. Questions may bepresented to users in various ways including programmatic notificationsvia email, instant messaging or other suitable method based on termwords within the question and/or categories associated with theprospective answer to the question. In addition, presented questions maybe arranged by term words, category, initial reward type, reward value,the time the question was made, and/or the time the questions expire. Insome embodiments, users may access questions via full-text search. Insome embodiments, at least some of the response provider users may nothave the ability to have questions presented to them in all of thepreviously mentioned manners. In addition, the number of responseprovider users may be limited to a predetermined number; thus, responseprovider users may indicate that they are working on a response in someembodiments.

Response provider users may then provide responses to the questions.Factual responses may in some embodiments require the response provideruser to acknowledge the source of the information. If clarification isneeded to answer a question, a response provider user or an itemprovider user may ask for clarification from the requester user in someembodiments. In some embodiments, previous responses from other responseprovider users may be hidden from other response provider users. When aquestion is finished, at least some of the responses may become ananswer to the question and a number of experience points may be awardedfor the unique responses to the question. In some embodiments, at leastsome of the responses may not be used in the answer, such as responsesthat are abusive or lame (i.e. unhelpful). A question may be consideredfinished in various ways such as after an indicated time period for thequestions has elapsed, after a predetermined number of responses, orafter responses from a predetermined number of response provider users.

Experience points may be awarded for each category. In one embodiment,experience points for the question may be determined and then divided bythe number of unique responses. Then, the points for a unique responsemay be divided by the number of response provider users that providedthe response. In some embodiments, the determined point allocation foreach of the response provider users is divided by the number ofcategories associated with the answer. Categories may include in someembodiments one or more associated tags and may be automaticallygenerated from the responses and/or tags supplied by both requesterusers and/or response provider users. In addition to awarding experiencepoints, the response provider user may in some embodiments be providedwith at least a portion of the requester user-specified reward or areward for one or more bonuses (e.g., for the best answer, best responseprovider user). Additional details related to experience pointallocation are provided elsewhere.

Responses may be presented to the requester user and/or viewer users. Insome embodiments, a user may see responses as they are provided by, orreceived from, response provider users. Various other items, includingadvertisements, responses from item provider users, and/or sponsoredlinks may be displayed along with the responses. Additional methods ofgenerating revenue other than advertisements may also be utilized togenerate a revenue stream.

In some embodiments, a requester user may provide feedback about variousresponses such as marking the response as lame (e.g., on topic butunhelpful) or abusive (e.g., off-topic response). In addition, in someembodiments, if the response to a question was an opinion, the requesteruser may request one or more follow-ups to the opinion. In someembodiments, response provider users that provided a response to aquestion may also provide various types of feedback about the questionand/or its associated responses, before and/or after experience pointsare allocated. For example, response provider users may in someembodiments be able to suggest tags, vote on a best (or even a primary)tag for the answer to be used in identifying a category for the answer,vote for the best response, vote for the best response provider user fora given question, or indicate that a response is lame or abusive. Insome embodiments, other users who did not provide a response to thequestion may also provide feedback. As a result of user-providedfeedback, the expertise point allocation for the responses may bealtered accordingly. Additional details related to feedback aredescribed below.

In some embodiments, since at least some individual payouts of cash to,for example, a response provider user may be small, the amount earnedmay be aggregated until the amount of money earned exceeds apredetermined amount of money (e.g., $5.00). In some embodiments, theamount owed the response provider user may be associated with theresponse provider user's account and include all earnings whether fromthe revenue sharing, initial reward (if any), and any cash bonuses. Inaddition, in some embodiments, instead of awarding cash, a non-cashequivalent value may be alternatively awarded such as gift certificatesor frequent flier miles (or other loyalty points). Some or all of thebonuses such as receiving a certain milestone in experience points in acategory may be added to money owed the response provider user or givenas a non-cash gift (e.g., gift certificate).

In some embodiments, when a requester user submits a question, the RapidAnswer system may check to see if the same question has been recentlyasked and answered. If the system determines that question has beenpreviously asked and answered, then the Rapid Answer system may providethe answer to the previously asked question and not present the questionto response provider users. In some embodiments, as a result, noexperience points are awarded; while in other embodiments, bonuses maybe awarded to response provider users that previously answered thepreviously asked question or the revenue stream share for that questionadjusted (e.g., more revenue allocated for the question).

As noted above, some embodiments may interact with or otherwise utilizesystems for interacting with human users to supply tasks to be performedand to receive corresponding results. As described in more detail inU.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/990,949, some such systems mayprovide functionality related to obtaining and using information aboutqualifications of users such as to allow other users to identify and/orspecify types of users with whom to conduct transactions. In someembodiments, qualifications may be automatically determined for responseprovider users and utilized to determine which response provider usersmay be provided access to particular questions. For example,qualifications may be associated with tags and/or categories that areutilized in conjunction with questions, responses, and answers. Asresponse provider users provide answers and thereby gain experiencepoints and corresponding expertise levels in particular categories, theymay be granted qualifications associated with those categories, whichmay in turn enable the response provider users to gain access toquestions that require such qualifications. In addition, requester usersmay further associate qualifications with provided questions in at leastsome embodiments such that the provided questions may only be accessedby and/or answered by response provider users who have obtained theappropriate qualification. In addition, qualifications may beautomatically associated with questions based at least in part on thetags and/or categories associated with such questions (e.g., associate aJava programming qualification with a question that uses the tag“Java”). Embodiments may also associate qualifications with questionsbased on other factors, such as if the reward offered for a particularquestion is greater than a predetermined amount (e.g., associatingqualifications with questions that have rewards greater than $5, wherethe type of qualification is based on one or more tags associated withthe question).

In some embodiments, systems for interacting with human users to supplytasks to be performed and to receive corresponding results may beutilized to specify tasks related to questions, responses, and/oranswers and assigning such tasks to human users for performance. Forexample, tasks may be specified that consist of categorizing questions,and human categorizer users may perform such tasks by choosingappropriate categories for questions and/or answers based on associatedcontent, metadata, and/or tags. Such categorizer users may be rewardedin various ways, such as with money and/or by earning experience pointsor qualifications related to performing categorization tasks. Othertypes of tasks to be performed by human users are also contemplated,including tasks that consist of editing or otherwise improving thequality of supplied questions and/or responses. For example, humanperformance tasks may be generated that include selecting or otherwiseediting tags associated with questions, or editing the content ofquestions and/or responses to improve grammar or other characteristics.

As previously discussed, in some embodiments electronic messages may beused to send commands to the Rapid Answer system. In one exampleembodiment, a non-exclusive list of such commands are as follows:

Command Name Description unhelpful indicates that a particular responseis not satisfactory abusive indicates that a particular response isinappropriate and/or spam like indicates that a particular response isgood best indicates that a particular response is great buy x allows auser to buy more question submissions and/or items from one or more itemsuppliers pay x y allows a user to pay another user x an indicatedamount y confirm x confirms a previously indicated purchase rejectexplicitly cancels a prospective purchase help provides a list ofavailable commands resubmit allows a requester user to resubmit aquestion if not satisfied with any of the responses; may only beavailable once for each question info gives basic information about auser's account, such as number of questions remaining, list of last 20questions asked by the user, and unique identifiers for the questionssearch x allows a user to search for questions view x allows user to seeanswers to question x categories provides most popular categories thatthe user has not subscribed to sub x allows a user to subscribe tocategory x unsub x allows a user to unsubscribe to category x join xindicates the user wants to receive emails about responses to andcomments about question x unjoin x indicates the user no longer wants toreceive emails about responses or comments for question x block xprevents the sending of any more responses or comments from user x findx locates one or more items corresponding to x and displays the price,the items may be subsequently purchased using the buy commandIn the table, x and y are parameters that may follow a command, althoughin some cases the parameters may be optional. For example, “confirm” mayin some embodiments not require a parameter. This list of commands ismerely exemplary, and in other embodiments more or less commands may beavailable.

In some embodiments, the commands may further be used as part of amessage authentication process. For example, after a requester user hasset up an account with payment information, when a requester user needsto buy more questions, the requester user may send a message to“buy@rapid-answer.com” and in the body of the message type “buy XX”where XX is the number of questions that the requester user wants topurchase. After the Rapid Answer system receives the message from therequester user, the system may send back a confirmation request messageto confirm the purchase, with the message having a tracking identifier.When the user receives the confirmation request message, the user mayreply to the message by typing in “confirm ####”, where #### is theuser's 4-digit PIN. If the user entered the wrong number of questions tobuy, the user may also send a message with the “reject” command toprevent the transaction from occurring. When the Rapid Answer systemreceives this message, it matches the tracking identifier and the4-digit PIN, and if both match the system completes the transaction.Such a combination of the tracking identifier and knowledge of the PINfacilitates authentication of the user.

The commands may also be used in other manners in some embodiments. Forexample, a user may be able to search for and buy items via a mobiledevice. First, the user signs up for one or more mobile services andselects a preferred payment option (e.g., by placing a credit card onfile), a preferred delivery address (e.g., home address) and deliverymethod (e.g., 2-day ground). Afterwards, the user may send a message tothe Rapid Answer system to find the particular item by typing “finditem”, where item is a description of the item (e.g., a unique itemnumber, such as ISBN or SKU number). The Rapid Answer system receivesthe message from the user and may send to the user a list of one or moreitems matching the description and a price for each item. The resultsmay include an item identifier for each item and a tracking identifier.After the user receives the message with the search results, the usermay select one of the products for purchase. The user purchases the itemby replying to the message and typing “buy item XXXXX”, where XXXXX isthe item identifier supplied by the Rapid Answer system. The RapidAnswer system then receives the message and attempts to match thetracking number. If tracking number matches the sent tracking identifierfor the user, then the system sends a confirmation request message thatspecifies the prospective purchase. The confirmation request message mayhave another distinct tracking identifier, or instead may have the sametracking identifier as in the search result message. After the userreceives the confirmation request message, the user may reply back bytyping “confirm ####”, where #### is his/her 4-digit PIN. When the RapidAnswer system receives the confirmation message reply back from theuser, it tries to match the tracking identifier and the 4-digit PIN forthe user, and if both match proceeds to process the item purchase forthe user. The item is then sent to the user's pre-selected deliveryaddress (e.g., home address) via a pre-selected delivery method (e.g.,2-day ground). Additional functionality such as allowing a mobile userto specify the delivery address and/or delivery methods may also beperformed.

A user may also in some embodiments be able to pay another user via amobile device. In such a person-to-person model, users may sign up witha payment service. After signing up with the payment service andsupplying at least one payment method, a user may send money to anotheruser via messages with the Rapid Answer system. The user may, forexample, send a message to the Rapid Answer system (e.g.,“pay@rapid-answer.com”) containing the body “pay otheruser@domain.com10”. After the system receives the message, the system may send back aconfirmation request message with a tracking identifier. The userreceives the confirmation request message from the system and may replyto the message by typing in “confirm ####”, where #### is the user's4-digit PIN. When the system receives the confirmation message back fromthe user, it tries to match the tracking identifier and the 4-digit PIN.If the tracking identifier and the 4-digit PIN both match, the systemmay deposit $10 into the account of the other user and obtain the $10(possibly with an additional processing fee) from the user making thepayment.

Although the previous scenarios were discussed as occurring via theRapid Answer system, in other embodiments some or all the functionalitymay be provided by other systems, such as the systems of onlinemerchants. In addition, it will be appreciated that some embodiments mayutilize various mechanisms to enhance the security of such paymenttransactions, including capping the amount of money that may betransferred on a per-transaction basis (e.g., a maximum of $50 pertransaction) and/or per-time period (e.g., a maximum of $100 per day).Other security mechanisms may include verifying that a generated commandmessage includes information likely to be known by a valid user butunlikely to be known by a malicious user. Such information may includevalid tracking identifiers (as described in more detail with referenceto FIG. 2Q), shared secrets (e.g., passwords and/or personal informationsuch as mother's maiden name), and/or reference tokens that indicatepredefined payment instructions (as described in greater detail withrespect to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/200,880). Also, themessage may be sent securely, such as via HTTP/S or via encryption andhashing prior to being sent to/from the Rapid Answer system.

As previously mentioned, in embodiments where rewards may be allocatedto response provider users who provide responses to questions, therewards may be calculated in various manners. For example, rewards maybe allocated based at least in part on feedback from the requester userwho asked a question and/or the response provider users who providedresponses to the question. Response provider users who provided aresponse to a question may provide feedback on the responses from otherresponse provider users that provided a response to the question.

As one specific example, feedback from requester users and responseprovider users regarding a response may consist of rating an answer asgreat, good, okay, unhelpful, or abusive. The feedback from the varioususers may be translated into numbers to be used in creating a normalizedrating of the response, such as follows: great=+2, good=+1, okay=0,lame=−1, and abusive=−2. These numbers may then be entered into theformula below to calculate a normalized rating of the response.

${{Normalized}\mspace{14mu} {Rating}} = \frac{{2*{RUR}} + {\sum\limits_{1}^{n}{R\; {PUR}_{n}}}}{n + 2}$

In this formula, RUR stands for the rating supplied by the requesteruser who supplied the question, RPUR_(n) represents the rating fromresponse provider user n, and n is the number of response provider userswho provided feedback about a response. As shown by the formula, therating of the requester user who asked the question is worth twice therating of a response provider user in this example. For example, supposethat the ratings are as shown below:

Response Response Response Response Requester Provider Provider ProviderProvider User's User 1's User 2's User 3's User 4's Rating Rating RatingRating Rating Response Great Can't Lame Lame Okay Provider Vote User 1'sResponse Response Abusive Good Can't Good Okay Provider Vote User 2'sResponse Response Lame Okay No Vote Can't Lame Provider Vote User 3'sResponse Response No Vote Good No Vote No Vote Can't Provider Vote User4's ResponseThen, the normalized rating for response provider user 1 is:

$\frac{{2*{Great}} + {Lame} + {Lame} + {Okay}}{{{Number}\mspace{14mu} {of}\mspace{14mu} {answer}\mspace{14mu} {provider}\mspace{20mu} {user}\mspace{14mu} {ratings}} + 2}$

As a result, the normalized rating is:

$\frac{{2*2} + {- 1} + {- 1} + 0}{3 + 2} = {\frac{2}{5} = {+ 0.4}}$

Thus, according to the table below, which maps the normalized rating toexperience points, response provider user 1 is awarded +5 experiencepoints for the response.

EXPERIENCE NORMALIZED RATING POINTS RATING Great +20 points +1.5-+2.0Good +10 points +0.5-+1.5 Okay  +5 points −0.5-+0.5 Unhelpful −10 points−1.5-−0.5 Abusive −20 points   −2-−1.5In answers that have multiple categories, the same number of experiencepoints may be awarded for each category, while in other embodiments theexperience points may be divided between categories. In addition, insome embodiments categories suggested by response provider users may notbe used for reward allocation unless the category has been determined tobe the best category, such as based on voting by the response providerusers and/or in other manners (e.g., based on requester user feedback).However, if so, all categories suggested may be used for other purposes(e.g., available for searching on).

As a continuation of the prior example, response provider user 2receives a −0.4 normalized rating, and thus receives +5 experiencepoints despite the response being marked as abusive by the requesteruser. However, in some embodiments, since the response was marked asabusive, the abusive response will nonetheless be tracked and usedagainst response provider user 2 in other manners, such as totemporarily or permanently ban response provider user 2 if responseprovider user 2 gives too many responses marked as abusive by requesterusers. Continuing to apply the formula for this example, responseprovider user 3 receives a −0.75 rating and has 10 experience pointsdeducted for the response (i.e. is allocated −10 experience points).

In some embodiments, if there were not at least a predetermined number(e.g., three) of ratings received, then the response by default isdeemed to be okay and is awarded +5 experience points. Thus, responseprovider user 4 may be awarded +5 points for the response provider user4's response to the question. In addition, the response provider userwith the highest normalized ratings—assuming that it is over apredetermined normalized rating (e.g., +0.5)—may be determined to be thebest response and awarded a bonus of +10 experience points. In the eventof a tie, the requester user's rating will be utilized to break the tieand if there is still a tie, neither response may be determined to bethe best response. Penalties (e.g., deducting 50 experience points percategory, tracking the response provider user for possible banning fromthe Rapid Answer system, etc.) may also be assessed in some embodimentsfor failing to submit a response after accepting a question. In someembodiments, responses from item provider users may also be rewardedwith experience points based on feedback about the item provider user'sresponse and/or the item provider user may provide feedback to be usedin the allocation of experience points.

In some embodiments, various security and/or fraud measures may beutilized. For example, in some embodiments, users may sign-in to theRapid Answer system with a username and password. Various logs ofactivity may be utilized to prevent and deal with fraud and securitybreaches. Limits may be placed on the number of questions from the samerequester user a response provider user may answer within a set periodof time. In addition, the same person may not be allowed to both ask aquestion as a requester user and answer the question as a responseprovider user.

Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that in some embodimentsthe functionality provided by the routines discussed above may beprovided in alternative ways, such as being split among more routines orconsolidated into fewer routines. Similarly, in some embodimentsillustrated routines may provide more or less functionality than isdescribed, such as when other illustrated routines instead lack orinclude such functionality respectively, or when the amount offunctionality that is provided is altered. In addition, while variousoperations may be illustrated as being performed in a particular manner(e.g., in serial or in parallel) and/or in a particular order, thoseskilled in the art will appreciate that in other embodiments theoperations may be performed in other orders and in other manners. Thoseskilled in the art will also appreciate that the data structuresdiscussed above may be structured in different manners, such as byhaving a single data structure split into multiple data structures or byhaving multiple data structures consolidated into a single datastructure. Similarly, in some embodiments illustrated data structuresmay store more or less information than is described, such as when otherillustrated data structures instead lack or include such informationrespectively, or when the amount or types of information that is storedis altered.

From the foregoing it will be appreciated that, although specificembodiments have been described herein for purposes of illustration,various modifications may be made without deviating from the spirit andscope of the invention. Accordingly, the invention is not limited exceptas by the appended claims and the elements recited therein. In addition,while certain aspects of the invention are presented below in certainclaim forms, the inventors contemplate the various aspects of theinvention in any available claim form. For example, while only someaspects of the invention may currently be recited as being embodied in acomputer-readable medium, other aspects may likewise be so embodied.

1-46. (canceled)
 47. A computer-implemented method, comprising:receiving, by a configured computing system, indications of multiplequestions submitted by multiple users, each of the questions beingsubmitted by one of the multiple users based on one or more electronicmessages received from the one user; for each of the questions,responding to the question by obtaining, by the configured computingsystem, one or more responses to the question from each of multipleusers other than the user who supplied the question; and identifying, bythe configured computing system, at least some of the obtained responsesto be used as an answer to the question; and providing, by theconfigured computing system, the answer to the user who submitted thequestion as part of one or more electronic messages sent to the user, atleast one of the electronic messages sent to the user including atracking identifier associated with the user by the answer-providingservice to enable the user to later send one or more additionalelectronic messages to the answer-providing service that include thetracking identifier for use by the answer-providing service indetermining that the additional messages are from the user; andreceiving, by the configured computing system, from a user a replymessage to an electronic message previously sent to the user as part ofsending an answer to a question to the user, the reply message includingthe tracking identifier included in the previously sent electronicmessage and a command from the user that is not specific to the answerfor which the electronic message was previously sent.
 48. The method ofclaim 47 wherein at least some electronic messages used by users tosubmit questions are email messages and wherein a defined messaginginterface specifies how one or more types of information for thequestion are to be indicated in an email message.
 49. The method ofclaim 47 wherein a defined messaging interface for electronic messagesused by users to submit questions includes an application programminginterface (“API”) that specifies one or more types of informationmessages that may be submitted, and wherein at least some electronicmessages used by users to submit questions are messages sent via theAPI.
 50. The method of claim 47 wherein at least some electronicmessages used by users to submit questions each include an indication ofa question being submitted and additional information related to thequestion that is specified in a manner in accordance with a definedmessaging interface.
 51. The method of claim 50 wherein the additionalinformation for each of at least some of the questions includes one ormore tags for the question.
 52. The method of claim 51 wherein theadditional information for each of the at least some questions includesan indicated geographical location related to the question.
 53. Themethod of claim 52 wherein the additional information for each of the atleast some questions includes an indication of at least one of a desiredservice and a desired product to be acquired in the indicatedgeographical location for the question.
 54. The method of claim 47wherein the providing of the answer for one of the questions submittedvia one or more electronic messages includes automatically generatingthe tracking identifier to be included in at least one of the thoseelectronic messages such that the generated tracking identifier isunique.
 55. The method of claim 47, comprising: receiving from a user asecond reply message to an electronic message previously sent to theuser as part of sending an answer to a question to the user, the secondreply message including the tracking identifier included in thepreviously sent electronic message, wherein the second reply messagecontains feedback from the user related to the answer for which theelectronic message was previously sent; and determining to use thefeedback based at least in part on the second reply message includingthe tracking identifier included in the previously sent electronicmessage.
 56. The method of claim 47 wherein at least some of themultiple questions submitted by the multiple users are each associatedwith an indication that the user who submitted the question has prepaidfor the question submission, and wherein the command is an instructionto pre-pay for a specified number of future question submissions. 57.The method of claim 47 wherein the command from the user is aninstruction to purchase an indicated item for the user.
 58. The methodof claim 47, comprising determining to perform the command received fromthe user based on, after sending a confirmation request electronicmessage to the user that includes a second tracking identifier distinctfrom the tracking identifier included in the previously sent electronicmessage, receiving a confirmation reply message from the user to thesent confirmation request electronic message such that the confirmationreply message includes the second tracking identifier.
 59. The method ofclaim 47 wherein each of the sent electronic messages has a uniquetracking identifier.
 60. The method of claim 47, comprising verifyingthe reply message includes the tracking identifier included in thepreviously sent electronic message.
 61. A non-transitorycomputer-readable medium whose stored contents configure a computingsystem to perform a method, the method comprising: receiving anindication of a request supplied by a first user via one or moreelectronic messages; generating a reply to the request based on one ormore responses obtained from one or more users other than the firstuser; sending the reply to the first user via one or more otherelectronic messages, at least one of the other electronic messagesincluding a tracking identifier associated with the first user by theanswer-providing service to enable the first user to later send one ormore additional messages that include information based on the trackingidentifier for use in determining that the additional messages are fromthe first user; and after the automatic sending to the first user of thereply to the request, receiving from the first user a command messageincluding the tracking identifier and a command unrelated to the replyto the request.
 62. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim61 wherein the configured computing system performs the method on behalfof an answer-providing service, wherein the one or more electronicmessages supplied by the first user are each email messages specified bythe first user in accordance with a defined messaging interface of theanswer-providing service, and wherein the automatic sending of the replyto the first user via one or more other electronic messages that includethe tracking identifier associated with the first user includesautomatically generating a new tracking identifier unique to the firstuser and associating the new tracking identifier with the first user.63. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 61 wherein thecomputer-readable medium is a memory of the configured computing systemand the contents are instructions that when executed program theconfigured computing system to perform the method.
 64. A system,comprising: one or more processors of one or more computing systems; oneor more modules that are configured to, when executed by at least one ofthe one or more processors, respond to each of multiple questions thatare each supplied by a requester via one or more electronic messages, byobtaining one or more responses to the question from one or more users;generating an answer to the question based on at least one of theobtained responses; and providing the answer to the requester whosupplied the question as part of one or more electronic messages thatinclude a generated tracking identifier associated with the requesterfor later use in one or more replies sent from the requester thatinclude the tracking identifier; and respond to an indication of acommand not specific to a response to a previous question and suppliedby a requester via a reply message, the responding including determiningwhether the reply message including the indication of the command alsoincludes the tracking identifier included in a previously sentelectronic message to the requester supplying the indication of thecommand.
 65. The system of claim 64 wherein the system operates onbehalf of an answer-providing service, wherein at least some of therequesters are users, wherein the one or more electronic messagessupplied by the requesters are each email messages specified inaccordance with a defined messaging interface of the answer-providingservice, and wherein the providing of the answer to a requester for eachof at least some of the questions includes generating a new trackingidentifier unique to the requester and associating the new trackingidentifier with the requester.
 66. The system of claim 64 wherein theone or more modules each include software instructions for execution bythe one or more processors of the system.